Key matchups will determine this.
Newley (far more aggressive offensively now)/ Abercrombie and Penney.
Randle/ Sosa, Ili.
Tyler/ Pledge and Loe.
Ellis/ Vukona and Delaney
Cadee and Blanchfield / Newbill

Sosa and Ili have to contain Randle.
Ellis and Newbill could tip the scales.
Breakers will hang their hats on Abercrombie and Penney.

Phil Smyth! Phil Smyth! Phil Smyth!

If Sydney get the win the ladder after Perth is wide open.
Wouldn't be surprised if NZ add another import in the coming weeks.
Sydney by 4

Kings member here. They actually looked pretty committed on defence from the 2nd quarter onwards against the Taipans, and if that continues they should be competitive against any team in the league.

Hope this kicks off a winning run and they can get more than 4,000 punters to attend games at Qudos.....

I'll be at the game tomorrow, but I hope they continue to underachieve and the crowd figure continues to slide, because that's the only way I see a major shakeup occurring before next season. If we finish 2-3 games out of the semis then I completely expect JvG and co. back next season for another underwhelming season of underachieving with a poorly built and overpaid roster.

No anon, just NO... Both JvG and Gaze need to go... Both have been serious problems and need fixing... I'm with AngusH, I'm an 18yr member and if I could have given my membership back this season I would have... I won't be renewing next season unless serious changes are made and I can't see them happening unless the rot on court continues...

No doubt the Kings will figure out some way to lose this one in front of a very underwhelming crowd...

I wouldn't say he coached very well. He sure did change some things and its a small improvement over the usual garbage we saw. Smyth no doubt had an influence on those changes.

Growing a pair to bench Tyler, more pacing the sidelines yelling instructions, pulling players' jersey serving in-your-face mini dressing downs and more timely subs/timeouts.

These certainly helped but you shouldn't be under the illusion that its the main reason behind the big win. There were some very helpful home cooking by Mayberry that put the undermanned Snakes in foul trouble and they were in a scoring slump.

I agree with AngusH as well, far better for the debacle to worsen than put up with the bs they either naively or arrogantly served to the fans. I'd say a significant number of members agreed as well, the lackluster crowd numbers were inflated by promoted free tickets.

They will get a bit more patronage from new fans over the holidays but the moment they reach 14 losses, I'd hedge it won't help them much. I don't think it will change much next season, they'll probably try to woo the crowds back by spending even more money.

Forgot Childress.
Newley, Ellis, Childress are probably stronger offensively than Penney, Abercrombie, Vukona and Delaney.
Breakers will probably zone a bit, because Newbill is the only Breaker who can contain Childress off the dribble one on one.
It is a poor zone because we leave the Free Throw line so open. Sydney have Childress and Ellis who can get in there and create havoc, or kick out to shooters.
Randle will burn us with high pick and roll in man.
Foul trouble could hurt us real bad.
Sydney have the edge and their outside shooting will dictate how long we can stay in a zone. I don't think we can play Sydney man to man.

Childress plays for Adelaide Tom....

Time zone issues.

Sydney are2 year's behind the rest of us (maybe even 20 years if you’re looking at the Kings offence).

Breakers are just like the Kings last season... dominate the league early then nosedive.

Kings by 47.

Seriously? Heal going on and on about bonehead play by Ili.. Ok fair point, except you made no Mention of the fact it was a ridiculous call that was clean and Cadee threw his arms out to get the call

Great 3 off the backboard by Blanchfield

Sosa having his best outing. On ball working for us. Penney holds the key for us.

hello, I'm a NBA fan.. not sure how I ended up on an Aussie gamethread, but hope it's a good game!

Blanchfield FTW!

Nek minnit....

Dribbling through traffic when you need to get a shot up in the last couple of seconds? NO!!!!

He was stripped as, bro

I'm pretty sure Blanchfield just bets his game-day pay against the Kings, and I'm only 25% joking. Just awful. Throws up contested jumpers early in the clock, had one of the worst steal attempts in the 1st half I've seen to leave a wide open shooter, etc... hell, the one good game he's had, he took himself out with concussion. The only positive plays tonight he had was when all he had to do was chuck it up at the basket and hope for the best.

Is it a coincidence that every single big the Kings have had for the last 2 seasons has been awful defending the on ball, or is it coaching? Which is more likely?

I feel like the Kings have shown enough lately to make a playoff push

Shocking final play by Blanchfield. Perhaps next time he'll pay more attention in time outs.

Fantastic effort on the road.
Loe game of season.
Penney found some much needed shooting touch.
Sosa most mature game I have seen from him.
Sydney execution down stretch hurt them. Where was Tyler's automatic J.
Huge psychological game for us.

Another kings loss, another trash post from AngusH. Same old same old

Honestly, considering the minutes Blanchfield plays and with the unit he plays with, I don't care about +/-. He was awful tonight, regardless of the shot late in the 4th Q.

Thanks for your thoughts Damo!

Loving it in the press conference after the game someone from the media mentions Randle has just posted a whinge about the refs on social media they ask Cadee what he thinks about it and Gaze jumps in and says we want to be a class organisation that doesn't whinge about the refs and then Cadee answers by whinging about the refs!

The Newley flop/foul was awful, but outside of that I don't think the refs did too much wrong tonight. Sydney got the benefit of the doubt on a few non-calls too. Definitely not the reason we picked up the L.

Surprisingly refs pretty fair doling out the crap calls both ways. Game was lost the usual way, poor coaching particularly in 3rd quarter. Back to head in hands, poor body language and no answer vs NZ's 2-3 zone, mind boggling with that many offensive weapons in your team.

Randle unloading on the refs on twitter...

Hard showing on screens should have at least been tried out for a few possessions. Kings are athletic, they could scramble rotate okay I reckon. Why not simply instruct your team to try It, Gaze? Or if Tyler doesn't want to play, drag him. You showed in the Cairns game that you have enough sack to do it to Tyler. So it's hard to know who's fault it was

If you're going to focus on the +/-, note that everyone on the Breakers' bench was positive (more positive than Blanchfield) and no-one on the Sydney bench was in positive. i.e., NZ bench was a lot better than Sydney bench. That's probably got a lot to do with Sydney being -13 when Blanchfield was off.

NZ bench almost out scored NZ starters! Great depth!

I feel like the Kings have shown enough lately to make a playoff push

Cool story bro

I'd rather go with a more budget team with the proper types of players and shell out more money for Gorj, than pay so much over the cap on players and a coach that can't actually coach...

The Refs weren't that bad last night. Calls went both ways.

I personally think they have too many stars and not enough role players

Look at Perth usually have 2 or 3 main star scorers, and the rest of the players do the dirty work, play de, rebound, hustle after everything, and i think the kings need to focus more on getting those types than the stars who score like Randle, Tyler, Blanchfield

For anyone who says none of those types were available to the kings, well Lucas Walker was available balsically all last season, over the past 2 or 3 years the kings have let go guys like Rhys Carter, Moller, Brandt, Maric, keeping any combination of these guys would help.

I thought Heal was on the right track in 2014 with Jesse Sanders who he bought in to fill the Damian Martin role, and imo did a pretty good job of it. You also could sign a guy like him from day 1 of the pre season, not mid season once the season is already dead. Kings were looking pretty good until they replaced Sanders with the star in Sam Young, further showing how flawed the bringing in a star mid season plan is. Yes it can work, but has only really worked in a handfull of cases, and guys like Donta Smith and Marcus Timmons were guys who did play de, rebound, make the team around them better and do the dirty work, whilst also being top quality imports. That doesnt suit Tyler and Randle as much imo.

I also would of grabbed a guy like Nana Egwu instead of Tyler, again available for the whole season, and play de, works hard, rebounds.

Also both these imports are not looking to score and be the stars themself and appear to be good for team culture.

This team may not be as star studded, but im pretty sure they would win more and have a better culture base to build upon for the future.

Brandt/Egwu
Ellis/Walker
Newley/Moller
Lisch/Cadee
Sanders/Carter

And they also need a more experienced/proven coach, Gaze at the very least needed a longer apprenticeship than a SEABL season as a coach to be successful, the kings need a guy who has either coached in the NBL before, or been an assistant in a successful program for around 5 years or more, ie more proven. One name id like to see given a go is Shawn Dennis, at worse Shane Heal was better than Gaze and seemed to understand these things more, so he should be the worse case scenario if no one better is available.

This team as constructed if coached by a more experienced coach like Bevo or Joey would also likely have more wins.

I think some serious questions need to be asked about the person who selected the coach and has openly said they put together this roster and last seasons, and came up with 'the plan' that killed the season before it began and was obvious to 99% of kings/NBL fans, and was defended by very few.

Another Kings game, another video coaching session with my son on rebounding, close out and effort.

In the 3rd quarter Cadee closed out twice with his hands down ......I would of benched him if he was on my domestic team.

Tyler played well off that pick and mid range jumper ....the Kings then went absolutely away from it (and I'm not sure if related) Tyler had a giant sook. 3 plays in a row he stood at the top of the key as an interchange and then just stood there as a shot went up ...no dive to the basket, no step forward in case the rebound went to the free throw line ...hell no even get back to stop the break.

I have no idea what Todd B is doing and nor does he and some of the subs were simply perplexing.

They are a very poorly coached team.

Not a fan of star & roleplayer argument often used when ridiculing star-studded teams in any team sport. Most competent coaches will always opt for a team full of star players if they can afford it and as long as the stars are not uncoachable dickheads.

The Kings' players look to all be coachable, nice guys except for maybe Tyler. Even then he's borderline acceptable. If you look closer, a lot of the times he was dragging his feet were mainly due to poor conditioning. The other times he was busy arguing with refs.

The main problem last night was coaching. We've banged on about how crap the shuffle was last season, what did Gaze pull out during critical stretches last night? You guessed it...

With that many guys able to score in different ways, what did Gaze run to break the 2-3? He had so many options and didn't run a proper counter at all. What about 1-3-1 with Newls at the FT? What about overloading one side with Tyler roaming baseline? Any U16s coach would've run one to kill that zone in a heartbeat.

I don't know what it is, but the appearance is that he didn't drill these guys at all. The adjustments game-to-game should've been taken care of in pre-season not now. It should be embarrassing for an NBL coach yelling 'HANDS! HANDS!' at this level.

Blanchfield is a star who scores. When did that happen?

People talk about Moller like he's the next Sam Mckinnon, OK he has upside but so far I have not even close to enough to suggest he will be anymore than a 10 min a game role player.

He certainly would not have impacted the Kings W / L record. It is debatable whether good Moller is better than a bad Blanchfield.

Agree Lovebroker people on here talk like Moller is the second coming. He has no bearing on anything Kings or United related but I think the reasoning might be because signing Blanchfield basically made him expendable and Todd just like at Melb before has been a big disappointment.

One of the biggest blunders they made before the season was promising him a starting spot when they already had Newley.

Cadee might have had a whinge about the refs, but it doesn't mean he was wrong.

The refs straight up can't get the flop/charge call right - to the point no one knows what is or isn't a flop any more. Change the rule, it's not working.

To me its not so much role players v stars, its the need for guys who play de and rebound and hustle at say an avaerage or better level.

Id say very few of the kings players rebound, play de, hustle at an above average level for there position and thats the bigger problem imo. Probably Lisch (when healthy) and Newley and thats about it.

When compared to Perth over the years, and basically anyone who has played in a GF, most of the players would do those things at atleast an avergae or above average level.

No one is saying Moller is more talented than blanchfield or a star, but he does play with energy, hustles, etc which is something the kings lack. If he is doing those things for 10 mins a game, thats 10 mins a game more than Blanchfield. Also when you already have Lisch, Newley, Cadee at the sg/sf positions, you dont need Blanchfield who is going to want to play big mins and take shots, you are often better in terms of gelling as a team having the guy like Moller to play his role.

Re imports, its not really about stars v role players again either, its the fact is with most imports you are not going to get a high level offensive player, who is also at the very least an average defender, rebounder, hustler. You usually get scorers who are poor defenders, or better defenders who dont score aswell. Given the kings situation, the need was more in defense and rim protection, given for a fair chunk of what ive seen of Tyler he has not provided much of this, and his scoring isnt really helping the team win either, so id argue they would be better off with a Egwu/Jacobesen type who do help with the things the kings were lacking. Very similar with Randle.

When you have a coach like gaze, who isnt great, especially on defense, you need some players who doe these things naturally to help the team and balance out that weakness too, and thats part of why those guys are so important.

Also one thing the kings have is a lack of continuity and culture, i think one issue with that is large amount of player turnover, even if the team isnt perfect it helps for team continuity and chemistry if you retain atleast 6 or 7 of your players from a previous season, and even start the season with an import with some NBL experience, even if they are not a star also. If they had something closer to what i suggested, they would have had around 7 guys on the team that had played for the kings before prior to this season, and many of them are average or above average defenders, so both factors would help the team.