The motto driving the Kings' title defence

Defend a title and you quickly go from the hunter to the hunted. Kendric Davis and the Sydney Kings wouldn’t have it any other way.

The reigning NBL26 champions are getting every opponent’s best shot this season, and Davis, the NBL26 Championship Series MVP who is fuelling Sydney’s 8-3 start, has explained the motto driving his side, comparing the Kings to an NBA dynasty.

“We’ve got this motto that no one wants to see the Kings win again anyway, right? Like it’s boring,” Davis said on NBL Now, presented by CODE Sports.

“Nobody wanted to see Golden State win all them championships. So we’ve got this motto: Sydney Kings versus everybody.”

That mentality isn’t reserved for the nine other NBL clubs. Davis says the Kings continue to block out the noise from outside the building.

“If we listened to the outside noise, we wouldn’t have won last year,” he said.

“When we were 3-5, we still believed in that locker room that we had a championship team.

“Everybody else would have called us crazy at that time.

“Everybody said they’d better be happy to even get in the top six.

“[Now] we sit on top of the ladder, but [also know] a lot of things can change in this League.

“Every team is going to go through adversity. Everybody’s going to get punched in the face. We got punched in the face a few weeks ago, and we’re going to get punched in the face again. It’s about how you respond.”

Sydney’s roster is talented and deep, but Davis credits the group’s winning mentality for its strong title defence.

“We just got winners; our core group is winners,” he said.

“Goorj [Brian Goorjian] is known for winning. I’m known for being a winner. Delly’s [Matthew Dellavedova] known for winning. X [Xavier Cooks] is known for winning. Torrey [Craig] is a winner.

“We’ve got older guys who’ve won at the highest level, we’ve got me, where I’m still learning, and then we’ve got young guys who haven’t seen anything yet.

“It might not be pretty every night, but we just find a way to win.

“We still got chemistry to build. We’re still nowhere near where we need to be, but we’re just finding ways to win.

“[For example] we could have easily gone 1-3 on that road trip, and things would look way different for us right now.

“We were super exhausted. We didn’t have Delly, so we were shorthanded.

“We’d just done a seven, eight-hour flight. We just had to find a way to win. And that’s when I love it, with our backs against the wall.

“We’re still learning how to play with each other. That’s the scary part. We haven’t reached our potential at all.”

Davis and the Kings will chase a fourth straight win when they travel to Cairns on Friday night, from 7.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN.

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