Rarely can a victorious coach have sounded as irritated as Sydney Kings' Brian Goorjian did when reflecting on his team's stirring finish to beat South East Melbourne Phoenix.
Goorjian described his feelings after the 74-69 win at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney on Friday as akin to being 'punched in the face' and 'kicked in the guts', all because he felt the side hadn't put in the effort they'd displayed in their previous two matches.
Two weeks ago, the Kings had been outworked in disappointing losses to undermanned Perth and to New Zealand but had been significantly better last Thursday in a close loss to Melbourne before hammering Tasmania by 28 points on Sunday afternoon.
So Goorjian was feeling good coming into Friday night's clash back home -- but he couldn't abide a lot of what his team produced, up to the point when they had scored just 54 points and were 10 points down with just seven minutes to play.
From there, former MVP Jaylen Adams shrugged off his sore back to lead them to the victory with the 20-5 run in the last seven minutes, while Goorjian stuck with Xavier Cooks, Bul Kuol, Kouat Noi and Izayah Le'afa alongside him.
Those who weren't among that quintet were at the brunt of Goorjian's fury afterwards, including superstar forward Cam Oliver, who went scoreless in 10 minutes.
"This was a real kick in the guts tonight. I'm just really disappointed," Goorjian said.
"I thought the guys played like they were entitled, with no energy, no effort, they got beat on the glass, were late on the rotations, walking down and we didn't have five guys getting back on defence.
"We lost against Melbourne and I was pumped because I knew some good stuff was coming because the grind, grit and toughness was there. Then this one was like a punch in the face with what we weren't doing."
Meanwhile, new South East Melbourne coach Josh King was again pleased with his team's rapidly improved defence even if their offence struggled with 34 per cent shooting. Matt Hurt and Nathan Sobey combined for 8-of-35 from the field and 1-of-19 from deep.
"There's been an unbelievable buy-in from the team and that's what I've been really most impressed with by these guys," King said.
"I think just their willingness to learn - they are coachable guys - and at the end of the day anybody can be a solid defender.
"Some guys can be better than others but defence travels and if you don't play defence tonight while not making shots, you've got no chance to win the game.
"But shooting as bad as we were, playing defence gave us a chance and that's just the philosophy and the mindset that these guys have bought into."
