Inside the three-peat: The remarkable untold stories behind the Sydney Kings’ 2004/2005 NBL title
When Brian Goorjian was lifted off his feet by a star import, who had one fist drawn to punch the Sydney Kings supercoach in the face, he had no idea it was going to be the defining moment of their three-peat push.
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It’s the historic Sydney Kings three-peat that almost didn’t happen.
Behind the scenes there was drama. Players weren’t getting paid on time, coach Brian Goorjian was manhandled by one of his imports, the desire to win the title again had dropped, crowds were poor and the campaign was on the precipice of being derailed.
18 years on, here are the untold stories of how the Kings defied the odds to lift the trophy in one of the most dominant displays in NBL history.
Import big man Rolan Roberts arrived in Sydney as a mid-season signing – and it didn’t take him long to notice the cracks.
“I knew something was going on,” Roberts told Code Sports from Texas, USA.
“My salary, I had to go ask for it sometimes, or a couple of times it was late.
“Sydney was in a financial situation where the money wasn’t coming like they thought, I guess.
“For me personally, watching the club struggle was hard. I mean, they could barely pay me.
“I was paid roughly $80,000 Australian dollars, but I was just hungry. I was young and I was really motivated to win that championship with that group. It was important to me.”
Despite the financial distractions building behind the scenes, Sydney surged out of the blocks to win seven of their first eight games.
All seemed to be humming along swimmingly until a November 17 away trip to Townsville when star guard CJ Bruton suffered an elbow injury.
The following week against New Zealand, rookie of the year candidate Luke Kendall went down with a season-ending ACL injury.
Suddenly the Kings red hot start to the season seemed like a distant memory – with injuries and major player problems behind the scenes piling up.
FADING FANS
Sydney was supposed to be the epicentre of Australian hoops. The Kings were coming off consecutive NBL championships – and chasing a historic three-peat – but it was a real battle to capture interest in the Harbour City.
High ticket prices, poor marketing and a host of Wednesday night games also made it difficult to attract big crowds.
It resulted in Sydney averaging less than 4700 supporters at home matches for the season.
Not even the arrival of Roberts – the Baltimore-born import big nicknamed the, ‘Mack Truck’, lifted the crowds.
Kings historian Matt McQuade still has vivid recollections of Roberts’ first touch in the NBL against the Adelaide 36ers.
“It was a power dunk and everyone fell in love with the dude,” McQuade recalled.
“Rolan was amazing. He was an unbelievable athlete – all power.”
It was a depressing state that left the playing group despondent, especially when a basketball clinic came to town and sold out the Entertainment Centre.
“That really p***ed me off,” Roberts said.
“Sydney is a tough sell. You’ve really got to do a good job of getting the fans and we were stretched out because there were two teams with the West Sydney Razorbacks and it was hard to fill that stadium.”
Goorjian was acutely aware the home crowds were down – and he’d regularly send the assistant coach out to check out the stands before the game.
Goorjian had lived through two mergers – the Eastside Specters and the Victorian Titans – and a team folding in the South East Melbourne Magic.
“So, I knew the signs and we had all the telltale signs of problems,” Goorjian reflects.
“Everyone thought that by winning it was going to relieve all those issues.
“Obviously financially if you’re doing that, you’re not doing well.
“I was very aware and I knew this wasn’t going well.”
Goorjian, though, never relayed his worry to his players.
“Because I was trying to shield the players from all of that,” he said.
“My focus was winning another championship.”
IMPORTING TROUBLE
Sydney’s American stars came with their own baggage.
Mark Sanford didn’t want to play at the five spot which resulted in a confrontation with captain Jason Smith.
“I remember Jason Smith got right into Sanford during one of our leadership meetings for not wanting to play centre,” recalled Kings player Ben Knight.
Roberts’ arrival wasn’t all smooth sailing either.
His partner at the time didn’t want him playing in Australia and threatened to leave and re-name his two children.
It was unwanted tension that hung over Roberts’ head during his two-year stint in Sydney, but he did his best not to show it.
For most of the season, though, there were issues behind the scenes with the import duo of Sanford and Roberts, with coach Goorjian conceding they were a “difficult” combination.
They were both Americans with plenty of swagger, so the Kings had their hands full.
Sanford was particularly challenging for Goorjian. He was warned not to touch the forward with a “ten-foot pole”, but he wanted to give him a chance.
And while it all worked out in the end, it wasn’t always easy between Sanford, Goorjian and his teammates.
“Mark was being impossible and it was affecting the other players,” Goorjian said.
“Every time we went zone in practice, he hated it. He’d roll his eyes and just walk around.
“I just had him out there playing offence because he refused to play it.”
SANFORD SNAPS
For a fleeting moment, Goorjian feared for his safety as Sanford held him up in the air by his t-shirt.
Sanford felt aggrieved about Goorjian’s zone, which he refused to play, so he thought he’d approach the super coach at the old Alexandria stadium following a Newcastle road trip and express his frustrations first hand.
“Mark picked me up, it was just him and me and I’m thinking to myself, ‘what the f*** am I doing here?’” Goorjian reflects, laughing.
“Mark is 6’10’’, his eyes are rolled back in his head and he has got me by the shirt.
“He has lifted me up and he has got his fist back like he is going to put it through my face.”
At this point, Goorjian’s concern was legitimate as he hung high in the air. He had one of two options: cop it and move on or respond in kind.
Goorjian chose the latter – and upon reflection – he says his combative response became a season-defining moment because it sparked something inside the American import.
“I remember I said, ‘go do it, big dog, but when I get up you’re still the ratbag that you are right now and you need to change’,” he said.
“Mark went out of there in tears.
“You talk about a changing moment – and I’ve had a couple over time – but Mark then became elite and all of a sudden he became dominant.”
AGAINST ALL ODDS
Roberts was the energy boost Sydney had been searching for.
When he arrived in the Harbour City, he could see his new teammates were flat after winning consecutive titles and he focused on providing a spark for the struggling squad.
“The guys who had been there for the previous two championships – I think their level of hunger wasn’t championship level,” Roberts recalls.
“They’d already won, so it was kind of like, ‘oh, whatever’, but my attitude and mentality was different.
“I came in with a little different juice, so the guys fed off me.”
The athletic American fitted in seamlessly at centre allowing Sanford to shift to the wing – and it changed the team’s on-court dynamic.
“From there we were pretty dominant once we got those pieces right,” Knight said.
Roberts quickly found his feet, although it took him time to acclimatise to the morning shootarounds for home games being harder than training during the week.
“It was crazy, man,” he grinned.
“Intense. We were out there dunking, running and sprinting. You’d go straight home and go to sleep before the game, but it worked.
“He didn’t get at us like that on the road, but home games, boy you better be ready.”
Knight concedes it hurt to see that the city wasn’t behind the Kings’ quest for a triple crown, however, it only fueled the players’ fire.
“It just made us mentally tougher,” Knight said.
“There were no crowds for the domination we were having and winning championships.
“Sometimes we’d get 3,500 people to a home game on a Wednesday night and that was tough.
“We thought, ‘well, we’re by ourselves here’ and it made us play even harder.”
DOMINATING WHEN IT MATTERED MOST
Sydney captain Jason Smith conceded on the eve of the postseason he didn’t know if his side “had what it took” to win a third straight championship.
Smith’s doubt soon turned into a confident belief when the Kings blew the Brisbane Bullets off the court in their first semi-final at the Entertainment Centre.
Knight also knew the Bullets bashing – by a whopping 34 points – was the major turning point in Sydney’s bid for a three-peat.
“It just felt like we were back on track after that,” Knight said.
“All the sacrifices, like no drinking or going out after Christmas, the extra training sessions on the road, it was all paying off.
“It’s not easy and you miss a lot of weddings and other important things in life, but that is just what happens when you’re a pro.”
Sanford’s shift in attitude was on full display during Sydney’s dominant post-season, especially in the 3-0 grand final series defeat of the Wollongong Hawks.
Goorjian implemented the zone in Game 1 – and it worked so successfully – that he kept it for the remainder of the series.
“We absolutely smoked the Hawks,” he said.
“I remember Mark came up to me afterwards, gave me this big hug and whispered in my ear, ‘I love that zone, coach’ and he kissed me on top of the head.
“Mark went to the Philippines after the Kings and we kept in contact all the way through. It was a life changing moment.”
The Kings dominated the deciding game, charging to a convincing 27-point victory, led by a career-high 38 points from Smith.
Crowds had been average for the first two finals games, but 8878 fans packed into the Sydney Entertainment Centre, including Bulldogs NRL star Willie Mason and boxers Anthony Mundine and Kostya Tsyzu, for the final game.
Kings point guard BJ Carter felt a sense of relief at full-time.
“It was an up and down year and we were never settled on things,” Carter said in reflection.
“Guys were in and out with injury, I don’t think our imports were always settled.
“It just felt like we were never in full control of everything that season, but then it just all clicked and we thought, ‘we’re on here, we are the best team.
“And we showed that in the grand final because we won pretty convincingly.”
Roberts celebrated in style by spraying a bottle of champagne all over the Sydney Entertainment floor, much to the dismay of one official.
“The general manager was watching from the sideline looking pissed,” he said.
“The skinny guy with the glasses who smelt like a human cigarette.
“We were in trouble with money and the floor was shitty, too.
“It was an older floor and it had a couple of dead spots and I hurt my knee on a dead spot, but that champagne moment was funny. I was like, ‘it’s over, we won and you are going to have to buy a new floor’, as I was spraying the champagne.”
Almost two decades have passed since the Kings claimed a three-peat of championships, but Roberts regularly thinks about his life changing two-year stint in the Harbour City with the Sydney Kings.
“It’s the only professional championship that I have,” he said.
“It was pretty easy playing with those guys, man.
“I’ve never played with that many shooters, like everyone could shoot.
“I swear we shot 40 threes a game – it was a beautiful thing.
“I regret not staying there longer - it was a really special moment.”
LOST RING
Ben Knight’s three-peat championship ring meant everything to him, especially after what the team went through that season.
He was devastated when he thought he’d lost it forever.
Knight kept his prized possession hidden in a box in his bedroom, but his worst nightmare occurred in 2018 when his house was broken into and burglars stole his beloved ring.
“It felt like I’d never see it again,” Knight said.
“For 18 months I kept ringing around to the police hotline and I did cash converters and nothing.
“I even looked at getting a ring custom made.”
Just when Knight thought his ring was gone, he received a random phone call one Friday night.
It was former King Tommy Garlepp, who was on the road in Perth with the Sydney Flames WNBL side in a coaching capacity.
“Tommy said, ‘Virgin Airlines are about to call you – they’ve found your ring,” he recalls.
“I was like, ‘what do you mean? He said they’ve found it, but I’ve got to go because I’ve got a pre-season game starting and hung up.
“Not long after I got a call from Virgin airlines in Perth saying they had my ring. It ended up being put on a plane from Sydney to Brisbane and then Brisbane to Perth.
“The cleaning crew did a big clean and found this ring loose on the floor.
“I was in shock, but I couldn’t have been happier – it was unbelievable.”
Originally published as Inside the three-peat: The remarkable untold stories behind the Sydney Kings’ 2004/2005 NBL title
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