NBL23 Review: Sydney Kings

Thursday, April 6, 2023

With the NBL23 season in the books and Free Agency officially opened, the time to review the season is now.

From bottom to top, NBL Media will be running through each side’s most recent campaign and assess the good, the bad, the ugly, and the upcoming off-season.

Gettyimages 1473782366
The Sydney Kings lift the NBL23 championship trophy.

The Good – Championship win
There’s only one answer to this question, right? While there were plenty of good things to come out of Sydney’s season, including Xavier Cooks’ MVP gong, the near perfect execution of import scouting and signing, and the retention and improvement of the highly capable second unit, the best of the best is achieving that ultimate goal.

With their victory in the Championship Series, they secured back-to-back titles for the second time in the organisation’s history and became the first NBL side to achieve the feat since the 2016 and 2017 Perth Wildcats.

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For all the ups and downs, highs and lows, and hearsay and discussion around the NBL23 campaign as a whole, fans of every club have likely entered this off-season comfortable in the knowledge that the best and most deserving team walked away with the title this time around.

Cherish this title Sydney fans, much like you did last season because – once again – there are going to be nine clubs chasing hard to take it out of your hands.

That being said, for now the Kings once again sit on the top of the pile – and deservedly so.

The Bad – The late-season form slump
Not that it mattered much in the end, but had the Kings fallen away and not secured their second straight title their poor run of form late in the season would have been pointed at as a real turning point.

Once Finals qualification was secured, the Kings rounded out the season with four losses in their final six games – with two of those coming to Perth.

Sydney had lost just five of its prior 22 games in the season, and had gone on historic winning runs both at Qudos Bank Arena and away from home across the course of the campaign.

The Kings grafted their way to and through the post-season and didn’t necessarily play the free flowing, offensively potent brand of basketball that has become so dangerous within the Australian basketball landscape over the past two years, but that didn’t matter.

Good teams find a way to win when the chips are down, and even though Sydney’s championship triumph wasn’t necessarily as pretty as it would have liked – when the Kings look at the rings on their fingers and the trophy in their cabinet they won’t care in the slightest.

The Ugly – Letting Perth sneak into the post-season
There was little, if anything, that was ugly about Sydney's season. After all, it's hard to find a huge amount of fault with a side that goes 19-9 to top the ladder, then goes and wins the title - especially without its two stars at the peak of their powers early on in the decisive series.

Sydney fans will be unhappy with how they finished off the regular season though - and not necessarily because they lost. Rather, because they let the Perth Wildcats sneak into the post-season.

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Following Melbourne's win over Adelaide earlier in the day, Perth needed to hand the Kings their first double-digit loss of the season to make the Play-In Qualifier. They needed to win by 11, and a missed DJ Vasiljevic three in the final seconds saw the Wildcats win by 12.

If the margin was any less - or the Kings had won - then it would have been Melbourne United making the post-season at the Wildcats' expense, so as far as who made the Finals and who missed out, it was a bit of a lose/lose for the eventual champs - not that they'd be too fussed.

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The Off-Season – Start fresh and re-tool
The Kings are at an eerily similar crossroads to what lay in front of them heading into NBL23 – they sit with a championship in hand, but no guarantees that any of their import trio will return to the side for the next season.

This time around you can add the fact Xavier Cooks is now out of the equation heading into future campaigns.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The journey begins for Xavier Cooks ?<br><br>The former NBL star gets his first bucket with the Wizards in the NBA. <a href="https://t.co/iD4KJrfkWS">pic.twitter.com/iD4KJrfkWS</a></p>— ESPN Australia & NZ (@ESPNAusNZ) <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNAusNZ/status/1640890931846193152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 29, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This off-season looms as a crucial one for Sydney’s short and long-term hopes.

The Kings have successfully re-signed the bulk of their core bench unit ahead of next season. They took their team option on Kouat Noi, while Angus Glover and Jaylin Galloway have already inked contract extensions.

Sydney’s depth has been one of the key deciding factors in their run to the past two titles, and that is now all but locked away for next season, but how they re-shape their starting five next season without Cooks, and potentially Tim Soares, Justin Simon and Derrick Walton Jr is key.

The side has been linked with the likes of Melbourne’s Isaac Humphries and Cairns’ DJ Hogg in recent times – but can they re-tool and attempt to earn the second three-peat in the history of the club?