One of those said fans is two-time MVP Chris Anstey, who can\u2019t wait for the series to tip off at Qudos Bank Arena on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the one [matchup] that, in our heart of hearts, I think most people wanted,\u201d Anstey said on Thursday\u2019s episode of NBL Now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want the two best players in the league going at it. I want the rivalry that’s been created this year. I can’t wait, two more sleeps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a mutual level of respect that they’re both top of the tree, and they want to knock each other off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’ll probably end up being tied. They\u2019ve got so much in common, and the rivalry is real.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A big part of that rivalry stems from the Cotton versus Davis conversation, with the former winning this year\u2019s tight MVP race by just two votes.<\/p>\n
While Davis\u2019 teammate Xavier Cooks this week called the Kings American guard “the best player in the league\u2019” Anstey believes six-time MVP Cotton will have the biggest say on the upcoming five-game series.<\/p>\n
\u201cBryce Cotton’s a leader of that club, regardless of who the head coach is, and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut his teammates go, Bryce Cotton will win or lose this championship for Adelaide.\u201d<\/p>\n
With that being said, the three-time champion is predicting a sweep in the 2025-26 series.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody hands out championships, and we have the best two teams in the competition playing a five-game series,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSydney has home court advantage. Game one will be huge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never ever want to predict a sweep, but I think Sydney might sweep Adelaide.\u201d<\/p>\n
The highly anticipated Hungry Jack’s NBL26 Championship Series, between Sydney and Adelaide, tips off at Qudos Bank Arena on Saturday at 7pm AEDT, live on ESPN and 10 Drama.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney versus Adelaide, Kendric Davis versus Bryce Cotton, Xavier Cooks versus Dejan Vasiljevic, Brian Goorjian versus Mike Wells.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-550209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}