Preview: NBL26 R14 Away v Sydney Kings

The Brisbane Bullets will play their last game of 2025 on Tuesday night as they take on the surging Sydney Kings with interim coach Darryl McDonald urging his team to rise to the challenge.

The Bullets did fight hard back at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Saturday night attempting to back up their drought breaking win against the New Zealand Breakers, but it wasn’t quite enough against Melbourne United.

That included 23 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks from imposing Bullets centre Tyrell Harrison as they now hit the road to take on the Kings at Qudos Bank Arena on Tuesday night in the last game for Brisbane of 2025.

The Kings come into the match up sitting in fourth position with a 12-7 record and having won five consecutive matches with them finding their groove led by point guard Kendric Davis, and supported by Xavier Cooks, Kouat Noi, Matthew Dellavedova, Tim Soares and Jaylin Galloway.

The game will be the second meeting between the two teams this season with the first coming at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre back on November 1 and that was a thumping 116-79 win on that night against the Bullets.

After Tuesday night's game, the teams will face for a third time at HoopsFest in Perth on January 15 as well.

While there was a lot to like in what the Bullets did in the narrow loss to Melbourne back on Saturday night, McDonald did see some clear areas they need to tidy up and that includes bringing the ball up the floor and the team getting into their offence better.

That's an area where new import replacement signing Hunter Maldonado will help and McDonald is looking forward to adding him into the line-up.

He's hopeful that will happen for the first time on Tuesday night against the Kings.

"Yeah, definitely looking forward to having him and he's another ball carrier, another defender and he'll be able to get into the offence and get downhill, and get guys shots is the reason why we're bringing him in," McDonald said.

"I'm hoping so (he can play on Tuesday) and I know it's the holidays and I know it's about clearances and all that stuff, but I hope his clearances can get through and if he's available, he'll definitely be playing."

As for taking on Sydney, the Kings are currently the hottest team in the league having won five straight to be solid in fourth position but McDonald is looking forward to the Bullets rising to the challenge.

"I still think we're a chance and I don't think we're out of it until we're actually out of it so we have to fight every game and in these close we just have to come up with some of these wins, and if we do that we'll put some pressure on these teams we're chasing," McDonald said.

"What we have to do is give ourselves a chance to win and we can't let teams get out on us, that's the one thing that's hurt us going back to my first game against South East.

"Once they got out on us, we couldn’t get it back and the same thing against Melbourne, but I knew because we've done it before against Melbourne after getting down pretty big, and we've been able to make a comeback before shooting ourselves in the foot by giving up some o-boards.

"My plan is to go into this game like any other is to play to win and come up with a plan that will help us do that."

It's also another fascinating coaching experience for McDonald when he comes up against Brian Goorjian for the first time in the NBL with the pair having had a strong connection for over 30 years now.

That's on the back of McDonald coaching against Dean Vickerman who he worked with for great success at Melbourne United, but ultimately it's winning that matters above everything.

"There's some fun to it but I don’t care who we're playing, man, I don’t like losing and I don’t care who it is," McDonald said.

"I love playing against all these coaches and coaching against them, and trying to game plan against them and things like that, and there's some fun about being back in this position, but I'm struggling with the losing, man.

"We've gotta find ways to get wins and we've got Goorj coming up and we'll come up with a game plan against them knowing they've been playing really well lately so we will come up with a game plan to try and get a win in Sydney."

GAME INFO

Who: Brisbane Bullets vs Sydney Kings

Tip off: 6:30pm (AEST), Tuesday 30 December, 2025

Where: Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney

Watch: ESPN via Foxtel, Disney+, Kayo and Fetch