{"id":568787,"date":"2026-03-27T23:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/568787\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T23:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:22:09","slug":"adelaide-36ers-beat-sydney-kings-to-level-nbl-finals-kendric-davis-and-bryce-cotton-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/568787\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide 36ers beat Sydney Kings to level NBL finals, Kendric Davis and Bryce Cotton clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney coach Brian Goorjian insists he’s not concerned by Kendric Davis’s post-match tirade at Adelaide superstar Bryce Cotton, following the 36ers’ NBL championship-levelling 91-89 win over the Kings.<\/p>\n

After Davis missed a go-ahead drive in the dying stages, Cotton grabbed the ball and bolted the length of the court, completing a difficult left-handed lay-up over Torrey Craig with 0.2 seconds remaining, to seal the victory and level the series at 1-1 at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.<\/p>\n

As Cotton was celebrating his epic game-two match-winner, he was met by Davis, who made a beeline for the league MVP and started yelling in his face and gesturing animatedly.<\/p>\n

It was the second time Davis had words with his rival last night, after also getting in Cotton’s face with 1:11 left in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

“Everyone’s stirring, poking the bear on both teams,” Goorjian said.<\/p>\n

“It’s, ‘Yap yap, he said, you said.’ Guys are wound up. They want to win a championship.<\/p>\n

“I made nothing of what went on in our place in game one; I made nothing out of this.<\/p>\n

“I’m looking forward to game three.”<\/p>\n

Cotton last month collected his sixth MVP, pipping runner-up Davis by two votes.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Following the awards night, Davis unloaded at the voting system in a stunning social media rant.<\/p>\n

Davis was the best player in Sydney’s landslide 44-point win in game one of the grand final series, before Cotton took the individual honours in game two.<\/p>\n

Following Davis’s on-court outburst, reports also emerged that Sydney assistant coach Andrew Bogut unleashed a tirade of profanities at 36ers’ owner Grant Kelley after the game.<\/p>\n

Bogut was also involved in a heated exchange after the first game, after his attempted post-match handshake was snubbed by Sixers centre Nick Rakocevic.<\/p>\n

“You guys write a lot of stuff to energise stuff like this and everybody reads it \u2026 it’s everybody, both teams,” Goorjian said of the chippy nature of the series.<\/p>\n

“We had it last game, we had it this game.<\/p>\n

“I like where my guys are at.<\/p>\n

“We’re not taking a backwards step, we want to win the championship.”<\/p>\n

Cotton also hosed down the Davis incident.<\/p>\n

“Tempers flare \u2014 it’s play-off basketball,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I grew up playing at the parks where things get feisty like that. That’s just another day back in America.<\/p>\n

“You guys may make a big deal of it, but it’s just another day.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney coach Brian Goorjian insists he’s not concerned by Kendric Davis’s post-match tirade at Adelaide superstar Bryce Cotton,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5844,48979,64,63,726,33014,16308,68078,15057,588,85,68107],"class_list":["post-568787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-abc-sport","tag-adelaide-36ers","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bryce-cotton","tag-finals","tag-kendric-davis","tag-nbl","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-sydney-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568787","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=568787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}