Puncher's chance: Inside a series-changing 22 seconds

• ‍Game 1: 5 things were learned from the 44-point blowout‍
• Adelaide 36ers and Bryce Cotton face 'Massacre' response‍
• Cotton game-winner levels series as KD loses his cool

Spicy home cookin’, Bryce Cotton and a missed knock-out blow have turned the NBL26 Grand Finals into at least a four-round heavyweight title fight between the league’s two best clubs.

Adelaide's six-time MVP Cotton’s length of the floor lay-up to win Game 2 91-89 will be talked about for decades to come, MVP runner-up Kendric Davis inviting him to Game 3 after the buzzer in Sydney will dominate the headlines all weekend.

“I’ve never had a rivalry in this league,” Cotton said in what could only be described as a subtle Davis jab.

“This is just playoff basketball.

“Tempers flare — it’s part of playoff basketball. It is what it is.”

“I grew up playing at the parks where things get feisty like that, so it’s just basketball.

“It’s just another day back in America. You guys (the media) may make a big deal out of it, but it’s just another day.”

Cotton, 33, finished with 28 points — 15 in the fourth quarter — in 39:38 minutes and, coincidentally, was +2. His game-winning finish was almost identical to the lay-up that NBA veteran Torrey Craig blocked in the first half. Craig didn’t get the second one.

But this was more than just 10,058 raucous Adelaide fans losing their minds as the clock expired; the 36ers dodged a knockout blow about 13 minutes earlier, when the Kings blew a chance to go up 81-63 and close the third quarter with momentum, instead of giving Adelaide a sniff.

Make no mistake, former MVP Xavier Cooks was outstanding (18 points and 10 rebounds), but his missed dunk with 2:18 left in the quarter would have made it 79-63. Cotton missed a three at 2:06 but hustled back in transition defence to steal Makuach Maluach's soft pass. A score on that possession pushes it to at least 81-63. Instead, it led to Josh Jenkins’ three and a momentum-shifting Isaac Humphries reverse layup off a Cotton assist.

The 36ers closed the quarter on a 5-0 run, under the psychological 10-point barrier — 77-68.

“It wasn’t mentioned,” Goorjian said of the momentum shift at three-quarter time.

“We ran a nice play, and you miss shots — we got the ball where we wanted.

“The timeouts were about little adjustments in how they were playing us and what we were adjusting to.

“And then constantly talking about what I mentioned — the rebounding, defending, and keeping Bryce off the foul line.”

The fourth was then all about the ultimate closer — Cotton.

“They flattened out the defence and gave him a lot of room to work, and he hit some tough shots,” Goorjian said.

“Again, he got to the foul line.

“I don’t know how many he took in the fourth (5-for-5), but we fouled him shooting a three, we fouled him to tie the game, and he got the layup at the end.

“It was things we discussed — easy to talk about, but hard to do over that amount of time.

“He’s a great player.

“I like our strategy on him. He made some great plays, but I like the plan.”

36ers head coach Mike Wells sat at the podium after the 44-point blowout in Game 1 last weekend and admitted he had no adjustments to talk about to get Cotton better looks heading into Game 2.

Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t need to make any but simply wait for NBA champion Matthew Dellavedova to run out of gas.

“I just thought that we just kept competing,” Wells said.

“I think we’ve had a whole bunch of games this year where we’ve been down, and this group has functioned at a really, really high level.

“I think that’s our 26th win of the year — that’s the most this franchise has ever had.

“What we’ve done a lot of times, with being down in a lot of different quarters in a lot of different games, was just find a way to win.

“You’ve heard me talk about the team having grit and all those kind of things, and we just keep competing. It’s led by this guy right here.

“I’ve said over and over — all the basketball stuff aside — when your best player is also a really, really good human being and very coachable, the rest of it’s really easy.

“Everybody wants to talk about stuff outside the team, which I don’t know because I don’t listen to you guys or watch the media. But I know one thing — in the gym, the guys have been fantastic since the day we started, like August, whatever it was.

“This group has come together over and over, and we just keep finding ways to win, which is a really good quality.”

Dellavedova, 35, turned Game 2 into a four-on-four by denying Cotton the ball at the start, but chasing ultra-conditioned Cotton around takes its toll.

“He’s been incredible,” Goorjian said.

“It was difficult tonight when we didn’t have him on the floor.

“He played a lot of minutes (27:29) tonight.

“I thought in both series, Game 1 and tonight, he was crucial.

“We got good offence, and he did a great job in the first half on Bryce.

“He’s an important point and gives us a great chance to get to where we want to go.

“It’s finals basketball — to win the championship, you’ve got to do a good job on Bryce.

“I thought for most of the game we did a damn good job.

“In the fourth quarter, he hit some amazing shots and got to the foul line.”

But the Kings looked different with Dellavedova off the floor, and so did Cotton ... until the 4th.

“Nothing changed. I play based on what I see out there on the floor,” Cotton said.

“The effort was there the entire game. I was just able to find some pockets a little bit more in the fourth.

“Guys stepped up and hit huge shots — Flynn (Cameron) was big, Z (Zylan Cheatham) was big, John Jenkins was amazing.

“Fourteen points in 18 minutes — incredible. It was a team effort, and that’s what it took.

“That’s what it’s taken for us all year to get to this point, so you wouldn’t expect anything to be different.”

And now, we’re on to Game 3 at 2.30pm on Sunday, March 29, 2026, with the memory of the ball leaving Cotton’s fingertips with 0.2 seconds left on the clock and Davis getting into Cotton’s face.

“It’s what this series is,” Goorjian added.

“Everybody’s stirring — like I said, poking the bear on both teams.

“You had it last game, you had it in this one.

“It’s yap, yap — he said, you said.

“Guys are wound up. They want to win a championship.

“I made nothing out of what went on in our place; I make nothing out of this.

“I’m looking forward to Game 3.”

So are we.