Bullets learn tough lessons from Kings

It wasn’t a fun night for the Brisbane Bullets in Sydney in their last game of 2025, but interim coach Darryl McDonald hopes they can learn from those tough lessons and start 2026 off on the right note on Thursday.

It was always going to be a stern challenge for the Bullets against the Kings at Qudos Bank Arena on Tuesday night not only up against a team playing stifling, physical defence but also the form team of the competition having won their past five matches.

The Bullets were then coming off a short turnaround from a narrow loss to Melbourne United at home on Saturday night and were still without Hunter Maldonado and the injured Taine Murray with Alex Ducas coming in under an injury cloud too with a toe injury.

It was then another tough outing against the Kings with the Bullets struggling to get into their offence and to keep control of the ball up against the defensive pressure and physicality led by Bul Kuol and Matthew Dellavedova.

The end result was a 25-point defeat at the hands of the Kings for the Bullets and being without three key players with Maldonado, Murray and Ducas didn’t help matters.

After the game, interim coach Darryl McDonald didn’t take a lot of positives immediately but what the Bullets can take out of the game is the tough lessons of what they need to improve on to be able to handle the type of pressure the Kings applied on them.

"It's a tough night and there's not a lot of positives and we did everything we said we wasn’t going to do," McDonald said.

"We struggled with their pressure, man, and right now they're easily playing the best basketball in the league and their pressure really sped us up, turned us over and we struggled with it.

"It was always going to be tough with us down on bodies and then Ducas couldn't play because he's done his toe and he couldn’t play the rest of the game.

"Taine is out and we've got Maldonado coming in as another guy who can carry the ball and get us in some stuff, but he couldn’t play.

"Then we settled for jumpers to start the game, all we did was shoot jump shots and nobody was getting on the rim.

"The one thing they do is attack the rim and they're attacking the rim and we're fouling them and putting them on the line. It was a tough out, man."

The intense pressure the Kings applied even in the back court to make it tough for the Bullets to bring the ball up the floor was a challenge just as it was in McDonald's first game in charge against the South East Melbourne Phoenix.

For McDonald it especially highlighted just how much they were missing Maldonado who has been signed to come in and help captain Mitch Norton with the point guard duties, and it flowed on to not getting the ball to Tyrell Harrison where he could thrive either.

"You try to draw up stuff to be able to get it over half court, but I've been saying it all year and we need an actual point guard besides Norto," McDonald said.

"Now we've got Javon playing the point guard but he's not a point guard and he knows that himself.

"You actually need somebody who can control the game and who can run your team, but it's hard when you dribble right into the corner and they're trapping you and they was relentless and we struggled with that relentlessness.

"We tried to drop it into Ty and they doubled in, and I think it's a respect to Tyrell that they had to actually double him, and whether he understands that or not, but he has to start because that's what is going to happen and nobody's going to let him play one-on-one."

Even though the Bullets have now lost nine of their past 10 matches, the reality is with a 6-16 record they aren’t out of touch of sixth position and a Play-In spot where the Tasmania JackJumpers currently are at 10-12.

McDonald still believes the Bullets are capable of still making a run but he now wants his playing group to believe that too.

"I think they understand the season's still alive, but it's easy to understand and it's another thing to go out and take care of business you know what I mean," McDonald said.

"It's easy for me to say it and I'm going to continue to say we're not out until we are out, and we've got another player coming in who I think can help us, but it's going to come to a point where we're going to have to worry about what everybody else is doing.

"But for now, we have to take care of our own business and wherever the chips fall, they fall. If we get in, then we get in and if we don't, at least we've tried."

What McDonald saw from the Kings on Tuesday night was enough to suggest that he believes they are the best team in the NBL, especially at the defensive end.

The numbers back that up too with Sydney only giving up 85 points a game while they are the best defensively rated team in the league at 105.2 with the next best Melbourne United at 106.4.

While McDonald and his coaching staff to take some of the responsibility for the struggles the Bullets had against the Sydney defensive pressure, he hopes his players learn from it too ahead of taking on the Perth Wildcats at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on New Year's Day.

"It's the pressure and they can turn you over, and they have athletes in pretty much every position and I think that makes a difference," McDonald said.

"They've found what works for them and they had an opportunity to play against a team like this where they know we struggling bringing the ball up.

"When we played against South East, we was in the same boat and couldn't get the ball up the court and they would have looked at that and thought they could do the same.

"As coaches, we've got to find a way to combat that and fix it, and then see what happens because we still have to play Sydney two more times and we've got teams that bring that kinda pressure that we have to get better at dealing with.

"You have to get it over and now even when we get into our offence, there's 14 seconds left on the clock and you get to a point where you're just throwing up garbage, we just couldn’t get good shots off tonight."