Will weaver not upset after that joke of a late cross court that favoured the home team...

Not like Jack to miss a Perf write up but he is only human.
I sense a sneaky Perth upset.

Hard to justify calling Sydney "undermanned" with the highest paid roster in NBL history.

I'm still interested in the wider variety of ads on Viceland.

Industry super fund (big spenders on advertising)
Vitamin company (with Chemist Warehouse, have they convinced business partners it’s a good option).

Seems to me like there might be expanded corporate interest in the league.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Anstey on the mic is great

Dont think ive ever seen damo stop, look at the ref and not play defensive transition, maybe he got fouled... probably weavers home team thing

Sydney are playing with 4 imports and they're undermanned?! Right-o anon

It really didn't feel like a high scoring half to me but the scoreline says otherwise.
Hopefully someone feels like giving Cotton a hand in the 2nd half or else it's not going to end well for the Cats.

Terrico doing the usual MIA then explodes for 20 in the second half

Cats can't keep playing Damo (as much as I love his defence) and hunt together. It's basically 3 v 5 on offence cos neither can really shoot!

Why os that a foul?

Surely bogut pushed him out there? If it was a foul on cotton earlier...

Typical Gleeson same subs as always..... don't try anything new numbnuts

Yikes

If the Kings can't hold this lead I'm sure the league will change the rules to help get them the win.

Bang! DAGGER.

Game over with 4 minutes remaining in the third term.

Safe travels, Perth

When your hot your hot. No team could stop that 3 point shooting streak, mostly contested shots.

Perth's scoring drought was the problem more than the Kings hitting some tough ones IMO.

Third quarters been very decisive this round.

I was expecting a close game going down to the wire. Very wrong I was.

I can see Perth closing, but running out of steam.

Not sure what you can do with that casper 3, pretty sure if it was ware driving on that last play not cotton he would have had freethrows...

Terrico doing the usual MIA then explodes for 20 in the second half

Does Kay always screen with his leg and hip out to interfere with the D?

I always thought he was a clean player

Can someone help Bryce this is ridiculous

Well the league will get what they want in the end, a Sydney championship. If it's not this year they'll allow them to have 5 imports next year, 6 the next and so on.
Cats playing pathetic.

Steindl, whoa whoa whoa what is he good for

Sydney then....

Da..

I mean, Sydney then United. Then Perth.

With white gone missing this game and hunt having to be benched as the need for 3 point shots and peremiter defense to stay in the game excalated extremely quick meant Perth just had no offensive punch outside of Cotton with 36.

If louzada and ware are hitting tough shots in a game there's no way kings lose.

Didis english is really coming along... thank goodness he is a next star. Wonder if gaze would be saying its great to have international flavour if didi was a next star in perth.

Sydney's defence doesn't get enough love IMO.

Didi being a next star is cheating , he played pro ball in Brazil and has been drafted. Sydney will cheat their way to the championship.

Hard for Perth when Sydney Kings have Adam Forde. He knows the Wildcats inside out.

"Steindl, whoa whoa whoa what is he good for"

He must shoot at an incredible clip at practice to get a green light that big. But I also think Gleeson knows he needs to keep playing him to get out of the funk because Perth are limited for genuine scoring.

Btown i think hunt was benched because he was trash and no other reason

I have changed my opinion on hunt. I think they need to bite the bullet and upgrade on the center position. And it doesn't help when white goes MIA too often also theres too much scoring load left up to cotton

Best home game I've been to in years as far as atmosphere goes. That was amazing.

Cat Chat is lit right now! Join our community.

Lit as in like a dumpster fire I imagine.

Cat Chat community ?

Its little wonder why the atmosphere was great today. Sydney were super impressive at both ends. Its great for the league that they are playing attractive basketball and filling the stadium.

I wouldn't mind seeing a Kings v United finals series

^^ Agree, it's amazing!

Finally!
Great to see that Perth is bringing back "The Perth Wall"

Albeit one brick at a time.
(Yeah, I know, "Dad Joke", but its either laugh or cry.)

Trev really needs to come up with a new "Plan B".
Terrico has had some brilliant games, and clutch buckets, but he's inconsistent, and today I think we saw the worst of that.

There's a fundamental issue with Perth. When Martin has hot ahnds (which is often) he'll nail a few, but his strengths lay elsewhere. Hence we have always relied on two things: Good Overall D, to limit the Opposition,
and reasonable production from the other starters. Today that was obviously left to Cotton & Kay.

Was Damo injured? I must have missed it, but I'll check the replay later.

As for Didi, he had a shit-hot game, and yeah if he starts doing that ever game, the NBl may have to revise that rule. But lets not forget that Sydney only have 3 imports because they signed Taylor as an injury replacement, so they could have brought Didi in as an import anyway.
End of the day, props to Sydney & Didi for a great game, but Perth have nobody to blame but themselves.

Correction:
"When Martin has hot HANDS (which is NOT often) he'll nail a few, but his strengths lay elsewhere."

Just give the championship to Sydney.

It's hard to compete when you're up against four imports. If the Kings want to play dirty off the court, the Wildcats needs to play dirty on the court.

Wow some seriously salty people on here.

I agree that Sydney are over the cap, right? But Melbourne would surely be too in that case. Start calling them out.

That would be Sydney cheating. But they don't have four imports and the NBL allowed the Didi signing (dunno why but its not the Kings fault). I guess SEM have four imports too but it's just that two of them are shit?

Weavers acting the other day was a disgrace. I doubt it would have actually gained any support from the refs though? And if it does then doesn't it just benefit every team on the road, including Perth today who were the road team?

It was Perth who lost the game today. No one besides Ware could score and I dunno why Gleeson didn't play their third import a bit more.

As for the crowd, unlike, say, Perth, there's actually other stuff to do on a Sunday arvo in Sydney. The crowd is close to what the A-League and NRL get, good for a sport without anywhere near the coverage.

It's not enough that for the first time since the hammer, Sydney look like an awesome team.

Give credit where it is due. Sydney played lockdown D and Perth stunk it up in the third quarter.

I admit it sucks to lose by 20 on the road vs Sydney seeing as they're cheaters and no one can compete with cheaters and it's not fair and waaahhh.
Give me a fair fight every time, thanks. Like when the Taipans visited Perth in round 3.

Unfortunately Stiendl had a bad year, has not been able to carry over preseason form.

There is a recent Cairns Post article behind a paywall about how the Taipans were close to signing LaMelo. It may provide further insight into Next Stars if someone can copy the article?

Unfortunately Stiendl had a bad year, has not been able to carry over preseason form.

IMO he is not actually playing that bad. His shots aren't dropping, but I'm pretty sure they will eventually because he's a solid shooter.

Kings are cheating having such a calm coach

So unfair for an owner to hire a better coach, from another country, who puts together a better team, and then coaches better than everybody else. Very unfair.

Next stars choose their location after clubs say they are interested.

Considering the kings went to the league seeking permission for didi to magically fit the rule, common sense suggests it was a done deal to the kings. I recall the world ending when perth got earnest ross.... he was avg at best, didi is way ahead, but its not a worry...

Pre-Perth game: Sydney haven't played anyone, their record isn't impressive.
Post-Perth game: Sydney are cheats.

Kings smashed us, if we stopped turning the ball over in the first half like we were, we prob would have gone into the 2nd half 10 points up and still gotten smashed, Kings were shooting lights out and Cotton was asked to do to much too late. Kay basically ignored on offence in the first half then allowed to do what he does best once the game was over. If Kings can stay healthy they will be hard to beat come finals, but I think that's a big if, Didi goes to the locker room almost as much as Anthony Davis does, Lisch has "old man calves" disease, Bogut has had an impossible schedule for someone already with an injury prone history. They need a lot to go right or it will be Casper trying the carry the team like Randle did when he was at the King's and everyone was injured, Ware is the piece they were missing to win the title though, huge improvement over Randle. Taylor looks like he doesn't fit with the lineup so would be surprised if they kept him once Lisch comes back. Still a long way to go, but Kings are in the box seat, hopefully we can bring them back down to earth next time they're back in Perth.

"Pre-Didi: Every other club cheats, this is ridiculous. The league favours Melbourne and Perth.
Post-Didi: This is fine, the league changed the rules for us but other clubs just need to do be more savvy."

Said no one. I've said many times on this board over the past couple of years that I wish the league wasn't so autocratic and rules were announced (well) in advance of any relevant signings. Hell, if it were up to me only teams finishing in the bottom 4 the previous season would be eligible for Next Stars. The fact that other owners aren't complaining about this and other changes makes me suspect that it's not as a big a deal internally as it appears to us on the outside - maybe plenty of notice is given and everyone is aware of the changes. It's not a good look though, and creates more than enough room for suspicion from the outside.

"It's not a good look though, and creates more than enough room for suspicion from the outside."

This was already confirmed when the NBL owner also owns NBL clubs...any other competition with a conflict of interest to the same level?

I think Firepower being a complete con-job was largely the reason for that.

The Kings got 9,665 yesterday, yeah terrible crowd that.

No idea what their break even would be but almost 10k is a great crowd for an NBL game, only the Wildcats regularly get more than that.

Yesterday's crowd was great. Not really interested in the capacity of the stadium - a 12-14k stadium is ideal, but there aren't any good alternatives really. I'm going to be interested to see the crowd on Sunday with the Illawarra Melo Ball's in town.

In terms of being profitable, I mean, is that problem limited to Sydney at this point? It's a legit concern long term - short term I think the plan is to spend and put the best product on the court possible and hope that eventually it leads to profits.

How is that a sellout when the stadium capacity is around 20k?