While the injury woes haven’t subsided for the New Zealand Breakers, their form is building and the offensive firepower was on show led by former NBA gun Anthony Lamb in the 109-101 home win over Sydney.
It was the second grand final rematch this season between the two teams, and on Friday night at Spark Arena the Breakers were on top virtually all evening.
That was despite having lost forward Finn Delany to a calf injury this week, exciting import forward Zylan Cheatham still yet to return from a leg fracture and Australian guard Will McDowell-White back after missing five matches.
The Breakers raced to a 21-6 lead when Izayah Le'afa (15 points) landed one of his four three-pointers for the game. Lamb was on his way to a game-high 24 points and by quarter time it was 29-17.
Le'afa hit another pair of threes midway through the second period to stretch the lead to 10 again. While the Sydney defence might be struggling, they don't lack scoring punch and by halftime drew level at 53-53.
New Zealand blew the game open to start the second half with a 9-0 run made up of triples from Lamb and Next Star Mantas Rubstavicius, and a three-point play from the 21-year-old Lithuanian on his way to 17 points.
That turned into a game-deciding 23-8 run to start the second half for New Zealand and they held on to win by eight to improve to 6-9 on the season.
Breakers coach Mody Maor was delighted with his team's performance, including Dan Fotu's first career start for eight points and four rebounds.
"First we played fantastic basketball and Kings are a good basketball team who responded," Maor said.
"They're so versatile and every time they made a run, we responded through things that are entrenched in our identity.
"That's stops, physicality, ball movement and something we haven’t always had which is the ability to respond when things don't go well."
Sydney, who next host Illawarra on Christmas evening, are now 9-7 with Kouat Noi scoring 19 points in Auckland, DJ Hogg and Alex Toohey 15 and Jaylen Adams 14.
While they accumulated 101 points, coach Mahmoud Abdelfattah will be upset after conceding 109 and committing 20 turnovers for 27 Breakers points.
"It was the first few minutes of the first quarter and when you put yourself in a hole like that, it's tough to manage," he said.
"You come back and tie the game going into the half but you exert all that energy and then they go down 17 again, and are trying to push back from that.
"We just didn’t have enough juice and we can't fall back by 17 points two different times in two different halves and expect for a good outcome."
