Can Xavier Cooks revitalise the Sydney Kings?

Sydney entered NBL24 hunting a threepeat, but they left the season battered, bruised, and defeated. With the return of a former MVP, they're set to bounce back and contend once again.

Credit: May Bailey Photography

They’re the Kings by name, and for two straight seasons, Sydney were the NBL’s kings by nature. As the club claimed back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, the first in dominant fashion and the second with a target painted on them, winning quickly became the norm, the standard, and the expectation. 

Even as they lost their coach and their entire starting lineup ahead of last season, there was no reason to think they wouldn’t be chasing a threepeat. They kept their much-vaunted bench unit intact, brought back former league MVP Jaylen Adams, added All-NBL star DJ Hogg and NBA veteran Denzel Valentine, and hired a highly-credentialed coach in Mahmoud Abdelfattah to lead the way.

All of those things, combined with the club’s sky-high standards, made their performance all the more underwhelming. It may not look like a disaster on paper after qualifying for the play-in games and finishing just one win out of fourth spot, but the cracks opened up by their turbulent offseason quickly became gaping fissures. Hogg came into the season under an injury cloud and never got back to his best, and Adams couldn’t quite rediscover his MVP form with a new supporting cast. Championship hero Angus Glover had a messy fallout with the club after barely playing, with his treatment and departure at season’s end leaving the fanbase furious, and Abdelfattah was promptly released with a year remaining on his contract.

Their offseason turnover alone doesn’t hold up as an excuse – after all, in between the first of their back-to-back titles and the second, they lost all three imports and a handful of important role players. The difference was, while they had lost players in the past, they never lost their identity. For want of a better term, “the vibes” were way off for last season’s Kings, from the opening tip right up until they crashed out with a home play-in loss.

“We struggled overall – players, coaches, we all could’ve been better,” Abdelfattah frankly said of their season after that final loss.

It would be easy to say that their championship-winning culture walked out the door with former coach Chase Buford, and that could very well be true. Buford was a polarising figure around the league, wearing his emotions on his sleeve at all times, but it’s hard to argue with his track record after winning it all in both of his NBL seasons. Most impressively, he built belief amongst a group that started slowly in his first campaign, and then maintained that energy with an almost entirely new playing group a year later.

Even Buford himself, though, wouldn’t take all of the credit for that. Sitting alongside Xavier Cooks after sealing their first title together, he was quick to hand off any praise and clear the record. “X has been such a leader for us all year… we’ve rallied around him the whole freakin’ season, he’s been our leader on offence, he’s been our leader on defence, he’s been our leader in huddles,” the coach said. “This was our leader, and we followed him every freakin’ step of the way.”

Now, Cooks is back in Sydney, and the Kings are hoping he can bring those championship vibes back with him. The former NBL MVP has signed a three-year deal, reported by ESPN to be the biggest in league history, joining a roster that was once again a clean slate heading into the offseason. He won’t have Buford alongside him this time around; instead, he’ll be working with Brian Goorjian, the winningest coach in league history, longtime leader of the Australian Boomers, a three-time champion with the Kings himself, and a similarly staunch believer in Cooks.

“Getting him back at the Kings was my number one priority because once you get a piece like this, this whole thing changes,” Goorjian said as the 28-year-old’s signing was announced. “He's one of those guys that people want to play with and elevates others around him with his energy and skillset.”

In the year since he left Sydney, Cooks has lived a whirlwind existence while cementing his standing as one of Australia’s most talented players. He made it to the NBA with the Washington Wizards, went to his first major tournament with the Boomers, and earned a huge payday in Japan while leading the Chiba Jets to the East Asia Super League title. With a whole career’s worth of bucket list items checked off in quick succession, he’s ready to settle down and resume the dynasty that he and the Kings had started.