A King's Warning: ‘Everybody is replaceable’

The pressure is mounting on Skylar Mays, but for South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Josh King, the bigger picture is a bench that needs to give him more and a defence still searching for its identity. He needs answers quickly.

It all looked so promising in Sydney on Sunday. The Phoenix poured in 30 points and seven three-pointers inside the first five minutes, but what pleased King most was that they held the Kings to just nine points in that time.

King has always backed his side to produce enough offensively this season. The defensive end is where he has wanted them to find themselves, and from there, they didn’t.

Sydney outscored South East Melbourne 101-69 over the final 35 minutes to win 110-99, and one player firmly in focus is Mays. The import guard played under 11 minutes for 2 points on 1/7 shooting and was -27 while on the floor.

After posting 20 points and 6 assists in a loss to Brisbane, Mays has managed just 6.0 points and 1.8 assists across the past four matches. Still, King isn’t interested in joining the pile-on.

“(I just want to see) him playing better, to see him playing better and contributing to winning,” King said.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be points and it’s not just with him, it’s with a lot of different guys too and he’s the easy guy to pick on, but we need more better efforts from multiple guys.

“I think everybody knows that everybody is replaceable, including myself. This is professional sports, so it’s a performance-based business that we’re in at the end of the day.

“I mean he’s a capable basketball player and we just need him to play better.”

For the Phoenix to get where they want to go this season, King knows the bench has to deliver more. Being without Hunter Goodrick and Daniel Foster right now isn’t helping.

Of those available, Angus Glover was solid in his 200th game with 11 points and 3 assists, but co-captain Jordan Hunter’s struggles continued. He managed just 2 points and 3 rebounds in 15 minutes while being -22, and is now averaging 5.0 points and 4.0 rebounds over his past three games.

Even Akech Aliir, who started the season tremendously, has dropped to 3.3 points and 1.3 rebounds over the past four matches.

King wants a collective lift, starting at home against the Illawarra Hawks in Wednesday night’s Ignite Cup by 7-Eleven match-up.

“I understand Skylar’s the easy pick-on guy, but Jordi’s not playing well right now even though I thought he had a good week of practice, but that doesn’t guarantee that you get to play well in the game but it does give yourself a chance,” King said.

“So we need to get him going and we need to get our bench going. I mean, Glove is a really good player and I wouldn’t say he had his best game today, but he’s a guy that we lean on a lot.

“We need guys coming off the bench to perform better for us and to piggyback off of all that, I thought D’Shawn Schwartz getting in foul trouble actually really hurt us today, especially in that second quarter.”

South East Melbourne return to the court on Wednesday against Illawarra, in an Ignite Cup fixture at the State Basketball Centre.

That fixture tips off at 7.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN.