{"id":586984,"date":"2026-04-05T12:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T12:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/586984\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T12:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T12:03:13","slug":"davis-wants-new-kings-deal-if-nba-doesnt-come-knocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/586984\/","title":{"rendered":"Davis wants new Kings deal if NBA doesn’t come knocking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newly minted NBL championship series MVP Kendric Davis has promised if he is not in the NBA next season, he will return to the Sydney Kings.<\/p>\n

Davis won the Larry Sengstock Trophy for his role guiding the Kings to a 3-2 championship series defeat of Adelaide, sealed by Sunday’s manic 113-101 overtime win in game five.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

After finishing with 35 points and 14 assists, the Texan point guard said the Kings had helped him fall in love with basketball again following a messy split with the 36ers over the off-season.<\/p>\n

His award, decided by compiling 3-2-1 votes from a judging panel across the five games, may go some way towards placating Davis for missing out on the MVP gong earlier in the season.<\/p>\n

Davis memorably took to social media to voice his displeasure at finishing second in the league MVP stakes to 36ers gun Bryce Cotton, his rival across the championship series.<\/p>\n

Regardless, Davis expressed his gratitude at the Kings for taking a chance on him this season.<\/p>\n

Kendric Davis dropped a double-double to help the Kings win the title.\u00a0Photo by Sarah Reed\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“You never want to be determined off one bad relationship and that’s what it felt like. Whether it was my fault, their fault, I think it was both our fault of why it didn’t work (at Adelaide),” he said.<\/p>\n

“Just for me, to get all the blame, I couldn’t even click on Instagram at the beginning of the year. You just see all the hateful things.”<\/p>\n

At Sunday’s post-match press conference, Davis said teammates Xavier Cooks and Matthew Dellavedova and coach Brian Goorjian had reignited him.<\/p>\n

“These guys kept uplifting me,” he said.<\/p>\n

play<\/p>\n

1:44<\/p>\n

Kings outlast 36ers to claim NBL title<\/p>\n

The Sydney Kings defeat the Adelaide 36ers in a Game 5 classic to clinch the championship.<\/p>\n

“I fell in love with basketball again because of these people right here on this table.”<\/p>\n

The Kings have reportedly engaged Davis in talks for a contract extension to remain at the club beyond this season.<\/p>\n

Keeping top-tier American talent is notoriously difficult for NBL clubs given the salaries on offer in European leagues.<\/p>\n

But Davis is enthusiastic about the prospect of returning to the Kings, provided a maiden NBA stint does not come to fruition.<\/p>\n

“If I’m not in the NBA, I’ll be back here,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You don’t find too many organisations that don’t believe the hype and do their own research, and they did. I’m a loyalty guy. They mean the world to me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newly minted NBL championship series MVP Kendric Davis has promised if he is not in the NBA next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-586984","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\/586984","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=586984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}