Kings lose MVP Adams for NBL GF game 2

Adrian Warren | May 7, 2022

The Sydney Kings will be without NBL MVP Jaylen Adams for game 2 of their grand final series against the Tasmania JackJumpers after he was ruled out with a hamstring injury.

Scans on Sunday confirmed Adams suffered a low-grade strain when hurt late in the Kings’ 95-81 win in game 1 in Sydney on Friday’s night.

It’s a major blow ahead of Sunday’s clash in Hobart as high-scoring former NBA point guard Adams has been the Kings’ talisman this season and they were 2-3 without him when he was out with an ankle injury.

Adams did not travel with the team to Hobart and the club says his injury will be re-evaluated on Sunday and Monday before Wednesday’s game 3 in the best-of-five series.

“Once we have the test results back we will be in a better position to make a determination on the extent of Jaylen’s injury,” Kings CEO Chris Pongrass said.

“The best news for us would be getting Jaylen back for game 3 and until we know any differently we will treat Jaylen’s injury as a day-to-day proposition.”

Even before Adams was ruled out, Kings coach Chase Buford was indicating he wanted more shots from his big men.

Sydney shot at an impressive 54 per cent from the field and almost 48 per cent from three-point range in game 1. 

But captain and forward Xavier Cooks took just six attempts and centre Jarell Martin five, though between them they made eight of 11 shots.

‘I told Jarell in the locker room ‘we’re going to do a better job of getting you the ball in the pocket in the next game’,” Buford said.   

“I think against these guys, if they want to hedge and pull their big defenders out of the ball far away from the rim, we’ve got to find a way to get the ball to our bigs in the pocket and let them be playmakers.”

Only one team in the last 24 seasons has won the NBL grand-final series after losing the first game, and Tasmania have yet to win a game this season in which they have conceded at least 87 points.

JackJumpers coach Scott Roth said his team would need to guard the three-point line better and stressed they had experience of coming from a game down to win a finals series.

“It’s the same thing what we did in (the semi-final series against Melbourne) United, lost the first game there and learnt from it,” Roth said.

He expected the atmosphere at a sold out MyState Bank Arena to be electric.

One key for Tasmania is getting more out of import guards Josh Adams and Josh Magette, who shot a combined seven from 28 in game one.