'It lit a fire under me' : How Angus Glover defied the odds to become a grand final hero

Sydney's super sub talks playing through pain in an epic game five performance.

Credit: May Bailey Photography

Xavier Cooks may have been the league MVP and Derrick Walton Jr an all-NBL first-teamer and star of the finals, but the Sydney Kings wouldn’t have won back to back championships without Angus Glover.

With starter Dejan Vasiljevic enduring a cold shooting night (0 from 5), Sydney badly needed some offence from their bench. The plucky bench wing came up huge in game five, recording 12 points and nine crucial rebounds. Deep in the final quarter, the Breakers had made three buckets in a row, held a seven-point lead, and looked to have the running. But then Glover doggedly followed his own miss for a dunk to close the margin to five points. Shortly after, he hit a three to swing the momentum back to the home team and close the gap to two points. From there, Sydney never looked back, reeling off 13 of the last 16 points to clinch the title.

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Angus Glover's walking wounded but digging deep. What a jam 😤 Catch the final moments of the #NBLFinals live on ESPN via Kayo Freebies | Sky Sports and Prime in NZ.

What made Glover’s heroics all the more memorable and unlikely was that he was playing with a painful rib cartilage injury after a collision with burly Breakers forward Derek Pardon.

“What was happening was the abs were spasming and cramping on and off,” Glover told The Pick and Roll. “I had damaged the cartilage right next to the rib. I was struggling to breathe through my chest because it was getting affected. To try to help the spasming, I was bending forward.”