Buford Backing Bench Brigade

The Sydney Kings are rolling. In fact, they’re playing like a reigning champion should. After their 49-point win over Brisbane on Wednesday night – the largest victory of any side during the 40-minute era – the Kings have won five straight games, with four of those wins coming by 20 or more points.

It was the usual suspects who did the most damage for the Kings against a helpless Bullets defence. Xavier Cooks and Tim Soares had 20 points each while Derrick Walton Jr added 18 of his own. But Chase Buford has lauded the quality of his bench unit in the victory.

“You talk about keeping it fresh, it’s not even that – I want to play everybody,” Buford said post-game. “We’ve got so many guys who give us different things.

“It’s exciting to bring in Jordi to play to his strengths, ‘Glove’ to come in and play to his strengths. Kouat comes in and gets us meaningful buckets a lot of the time.

“Then to have a veteran leader like ‘Brucey’ run the show with parts of that group, it’s a huge luxury.

“It makes my life easy knowing no matter who is in the game I’m not worried about matchups … it’s just ‘go and play’.

After leading by just three points at quarter time the Kings ran riot in the final three quarters of the game, outscoring the Bullets to the tune of 92-46.

Brisbane scored just 12 points in the fourth quarter. Despite having all but already secured the win Sydney refused to let up on their opposition.

Buford says the ‘play to the end’ mindset comes from losses suffered earlier in the season.

“What we talked about before the game is we’ve had a good run of putting people on their heels for the entirety of the 40 minutes,” he said.

“Earlier in the year we’d had some slip-ups from winning positions, so I think that mentality, keeping our foot on the gas, trying to keep running [has been built].

“Our defence is what spurs our offence. We want to play fast and play in transition and we can’t do that if we’re taking the ball out the net every possession.

“As good as our offence was it was sparked by the defence.”

Sydney has little time to savour the huge win though, and their thoughts must immediately turn to Sunday afternoon’s Freeway Series clash with the Illawarra Hawks.

Despite the Hawks sitting bottom of the ladder they’ve pushed the Kings to the final moments of each of their three clashes so far this season. Sydney has emerged from each of the games victorious by nine, one and seven points respectively.

“They’ve played us tough in the nine games I’ve ever played against them,” Buford said of the Hawks. “They’ve always been good games.

“You feel for them with the injuries they’ve had, but they scrap and they’re in every game until the end. Often times they just shoot themselves in the foot.

“We’re going to have to be ready for a challenge on Sunday, that’s for sure.