Cooks Rises and Lifts Kings to Win Over Phoenix

It was the South East Melbourne Phoenix back court that was taken out but it was the Sydney Kings front court who did the damage in their 92-87 win at John Cain Arena on Thursday night.

Xavier Cooks put on a show for the Kings in a fascinating match up with fellow Boomer Mitch Creek. Cooks showed his outside touch by hitting a couple of threes, and had a couple of monstrous dunks, including a Dunk of the Year contender over Dane Pineau.

He finished with 23 points, five rebounds and two blocks for the game and with support of Jarell Martin who had 20 points and eight boards, it was the Sydney bigs who were instrumental in the eventual five-point win on the road.

It was the back court that the Phoenix might have been more concerned about coming into the game with Xavier Munford, Kyle Adnam and Cam Gliddon all joining head coach Simon Mitchell in being unavailable through COVID protocols.

Jaylen Adams finished with 14 points, eight rebounds and six assists in another strong showing for Sydney while DJ Vasiljevic had a hot start with 12 first quarter points for 14 for the match to go with three assists. Angus Glover nailed two massive threes late too for eight points and five assists.

Kings coach Chase Buford might have left Melbourne with the win, but he wasn’t anywhere near happy with his team's defence.

"I was really displeased and disappointed with our defensive performance," Buford said.

"I felt like that was by far our worst defensive performance of the year. That's where we've hung our hats and we got beat by 42 last time I was in this building, but I definitely felt worse about our defence tonight than I did after that one."

Creek finished with 23 points, six rebounds and four assists for South East Melbourne while Ryan Broekhoff had 25 points and six boards. 

Lachlan Barker was a revelation with 14 points, five rebounds and three assists while Izayah Le'afa struggled as point guard in the absence of Munford and Adnam shooting 0/10 for zero points despite six assists.

Stand-in Phoenix coach Judd Flavell felt his team fought hard especially given how shorthanded they were, but felt some sloppy execution proved costly.

"We had our chances and we had some really good patches of basketball there. We kept ourselves in the ball game which was obviously what we were trying to do to hang in there as much as we could," Flavell said. 

"Down the stretch, I didn’t like just how we finished the last quarter and that's what I mean by it being messy. We still found a way to score but we weren’t initiating any flow or rhythm onto our offence. 

"A lot of that was probably people playing out of position, but we had our chances there. We just have to be better down the stretch."

The Phoenix came out perfectly with a triple from Ryan Broekhoff and put back to Mitch Creek to leave Chase Buford seeing red and calling the early timeout. He got the result with the Kings going on a 14-4 run including three-point makes to Jarell Martin, DJ Vasiljevic and Jaylen Adams.

Martin capped an 8-0 streak with an and-one before Lachlan Barker set off a run of six straight South East Melbourne points.

It was Vasiljevic's turn to take over and he nailed two more three-point bombs on his way to 12 points in the opening term with the Kings up 29-22 after one.

The Kings were threatening to open up a big lead up 39-30 with just over five minutes left in the first half, but things then dried up and the Phoenix worked back into the contest.

Zhou Qi was effective inside with his size edge and got to the line on three separate occasions for South East Melbourne to tie up scores, but the Kings scored the last four points of the half including a steal from the in-bounds pass for a layup to Adams on the buzzer.

On several occasions the Kings threatened again to open up handy leads throughout the third quarter, mostly after three balls to Adams, Cooks and Martin. 

But the Phoenix were staying close largely thanks to Broekhoff and Creek before a Reuben Te Rangi triple just before three quarter-time cut the Sydney lead to 64-62.

Cooks was feeling it for Sydney and opened the fourth quarter with an and-one. The Kings would go on another 7-0 run including a three-point make from Martin to be up nine. The lead was still nine with a thunderous one-handed throwdown by Cooks over Dane Pineau with five minutes on the clock.

Another strong Cooks finish had the visitors up 11 but the Phoenix weren’t quite done with yet. It was Creek and Broekhoff keeping them close and three free-throws from Broekhoff made it a three-point game with 55 seconds left.

However, a corner three from Glover for Sydney closed the gate and the Kings went on to score the five-point road win to keep closing in on the top four.

Both teams back up again on Sunday this round with the Phoenix at home to the Tasmania JackJumpers before the Kings return to Sydney to host the Brisbane Bullets.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 11

SOUTH EAST MELBOURNE PHOENIX 87 (Broekhoff 25, Creek 23, Barker 14)

SYDNEY KINGS 92 (Cooks 23, Martin 19, Adams 14, Vasiljevic 14) 

BOX SCORE