Why the Sydney Kings is the place for Kendric Davis

I was a player who was quite fiery, overly passionate and at times could go a bit too hard.  

Kendric Davis is very similar.

It’s well publicised there were some issues at the Adelaide 36ers last year and KD at times had to adjust to many different factors in his first full professional season overseas.  

Would you rather have someone who's overly passionate and can push the limit at times, or have someone you need to prod every day to get motivated?

He's willing to get better, scrap that KD wants to get better. He truly loves the game. He puts the time and effort in to be better. There is a public narrative that is out there when talking about KD. Is he a great teammate? Can he be coached? Is he too emotional? KD has a clean plate coming to Sydney, like any player. The only person who can change that public narrative, is KD himself. We are going to try to help him as much possible to do so.

I don't think anyone ever questions KD's commitment or passion or what he brings on a daily basis. I think that next step for any young player is to kind of mature as a pro and I think KD is in a great spot to learn from last season and we'll hopefully help him get better in all facets of his game.

Talent isn't what's preventing KD from playing in the NBA, it's just learning how to be a pro, the finer things, looking after your body, the mental side of the game - all of these factors become very, very important as you become a third, fourth, fifth, sixth year pro. He is still relatively fresh in the pro world.

We're going to put the resources around him to try and help him get better and hopefully get him get him playing to a level on and off the court that he can get back to the NBA one day.

With Delly, Goorj, our coaching staff - we've got a plethora of people that can help him, even Luc (Longley) will be a great sounding board for KD at times. We're going to put him in a spot to be successful, but at the end of the day, it's going to be up to him and make sure that he's focused on the goal and making sure that he changes the public narrative. We're going to provide as much support as we can, put him in positions to succeed and I think he'll do just that. It’s not often you have a chance to acquire a unique NBL talent like this.

Goorj likes players that have some shit to them. KD has some shit to him in a good way, like he's got some dog, it's not just bark, he's got bite as well.

Every now and then, people who have that kind of passion to, go off the tracks for a day or so, and have to get them back on. That's the challenge of coaching, that's what makes coaching special. Like I said, I'd much rather that end of the stick than having to motivate a guy to get going every single day of the week.

There's nothing more frustrating than that as a coach, so, we just have to make sure that passion is more often than not tunnelled in a positive direction.

KD is aware of the chatter, he's aware what's been written and said about him. He wants to change that and have a great season in the NBL. KD has been really good in his latest stint in China. We have some people that are close to the situation there and they said that he's been fantastic and really applauded his work ethic.  

At the end of the day, there will be many people watching KD, and the Sydney Kings with microscope.

We had our eye on KD, especially once we signed Delly. We believe he will be able to play off the ball for stretches as well. Kind of mimic what United did with Delly, Shea Ili, CG43 and Ian Clark. We're really excited about it.

We needed a scoring punch from the guard spot and he was a name that came up kind of inbound to us. He wanted to come to Sydney and we decided to have those conversations and got it done.

The fit with Delly I think is great. Delly's a smart enough point guard to know 'hey, KD hasn't had a touch for four or five possessions, he might be getting a little frustrated, let's find him an easy basket'. As much as it will be coaching, it's also we have an elite basketball brain point guard on our squad now that will be able to figure that out on the fly. I don't think it's always going to be a case where Goorj needs to say 'you need to do this or that'. Delly's going to figure that out very, very quickly, probably quicker than us at times.

KD's obviously got to play off the ball at times and I think that's probably going to be a new challenge for him and for us putting him in spots and showing him that you can be super effective off the ball, even though the ball's not in your hands. It's hard for a guy to go from high usage, to be told 'hey, we can still be really good with you off the ball at times'. Most players would doubt that, and it would hard to comprehend.

Delly's point of playing with Kyrie is a great one and you look at what Steph Curry does. I mean, Steph's obviously an anomaly, but you look at what he does and Steph does most of his damage off the ball. To defences, KD is going to be the head of the snake for most scouting reports and most defences, so at times it's going to be really good to get him off the ball and get him running off some pin downs and some cuts and back cuts and some movement and that'll help his teammates get easy and open shots.

That's kind of where I'm feel I can be good coaching wise, because I was in that system with Golden State and the Boomers that thrived from movement off the ball and teaching players the methods of the madness of creating chaos through movement. That's the next challenge and the next step in KD's progression in being an elite scorer. It's been well noted that he's spoken about that and wants to learn how to get better at that, and it's not an easy thing, it's something you have to learn and it's something you have to figure out on the fly and watch film and take coaching.

We've been pretty active in free agency and one of the priorities was getting us a guard that can close games. Now we've got two of them. One's more of a facilitator, but grown into a big scoring role in Delly and then KD is more of that pure scorer. We've ticked both those boxes and Goorj is very excited about the fact that we got that done.

Some teams, there's always the push/pull of do we be patient and wait for Summer League and see what eventuates? But I think there's something to be said about getting known commodities and known guys that have played in the league. There's a lot of risk with getting players over from Summer League that have never been in Australia, never been in the NBL. Every now and then you get a flash in the pan, but more often than not, it takes them a year or two to adjust and sometimes it might not even work period. They get homesick, the style of play is different and all that kind of stuff.

We like the fact that we could get some big pieces now before having a panic in a month or two time that our roster spots aren't filled. The way the G league/NBA contracts work, it puts a lot of pressure on teams overseas now because you can lose guys to two-ways, you can lose guys to G League deals. Japan's even throwing more money now. So, we thought if we could lock good names up early, we were going to do so, and we've done that.

We're looking for one more roster spot and a big spot to fill and then our roster's pretty much set for the season.

We're looking, we're prodding, we've had a few names that fell over and we're just trying to see where that all goes and just address that final need. I don't think it's going to be a huge, huge minute guy, it's probably going to be someone that comes in and can play a role for us and can slide in nicely with kind of what we've got already.  

NBA Champion Andrew Bogut is a columnist and contributor for Basketball.com.au. He is part owner and assistant coach of the Sydney Kings.

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