Following a tight first half where the game was a defensive grind, the Sydney Kings got their transition game running in the second half to blow away Tasmania and win game one of the NBL Grand Final series.
But the 95-78 win was soured for the kings with league MVP Jaylen Adams leaving the game in the third quarter with what appeared to be a thigh injury.
The game was played in front of 12,765 who witnessed a clash of two different game styles, the fast paced running game of Sydney and slow grinding game of Tasmania.
Tasmania had the game on their terms in the first half running a slower and well executed half court offence, while slowing the kings down with their smothering defensive style. That defense also caused a number of early turnovers for Sydney, but Tasmania were unable to capitalize, with a number of shots not going down.
Josh Adams in particular was struggling to score. He had 30 points in his last effort in game 3 against Melbourne United. But had plenty of attention from the Sydney guards who made every possesion hard for him. In his absence Jock McVeigh and Josh Magette both were able to find baskets inside early and out as they went into the main break down by 3 points.
Things began to unravel for Tasmania in the 3rd quarter, with a number of early turnovers allowing Sydney to get back their running game. Tasmania only took nine field goal attempts for the quarter as Sydney finished the quarter 28-18.
The final quarter saw Tasmania improve their offence and match the Kings. But even with Jaylen Adams on the sidelines they couldn’t stop the offence of Cooks, Clarke and Vasiljevik.
Despite the loss, JackJumpers coach Scott Roth is or panicking.
“It’s just one game. If they had have won by one or by 50, it’s still just one game and it’s a series,” Roth said.
“It’s the same thing to what we did against United when we lost the first game there. We’ll learn from it and we’ve got 36 hours to kind of flip the script and go back through it, tidy up some things and go on to Sunday.”
“It is what it is, we flipped the ball around and it just wasn’t a very good second half for us”.
Game 2 is on Sunday in Hobart.
SYDNEY KINGS 95 (Adams 18, Clark 17, Vasiljevic 14, Cooks 14)
TASMANIA JACKJUMPERS 78 (McVeigh 14, McIntosh 14, Adams 13, Steindl 13)
Sydney leads best-of-five series 1-0
