Kendric Davis and Torrey Craig showed their quality with Kouat Noi, Jaylin Galloway and Makuach Maluach having big moments, but the world class qualities of Xavier Cooks and Matthew Dellavedova stood out to Brian Goorjian in Sydney Kings' Game 1 win.
When building a team including such proven winners like Cooks and Dellavedova this season, Goorjian was never going to be too concerned over what others were saying about them or if they struggled early.
So when Cooks was struggling for confidence especially at the foul line early on or when Dellavedova was virtually being dared to shoot the three ball by opponents, Goorjian knew when it mattered they'd come through.
That was exactly the case as Sydney won a thrilling Playoffs Game 1 against the Perth Wildcats 105-104 with Cooks coming up huge with six of his 10 points in the fourth quarter.
Then there was Dellavedova who hit three triples and crucially, took over a lot of the point guard duties which was instrumental in Kendric Davis going for 35 points.
There were plenty of other strong contributors win including Craig with 20 points, and Maluach's big plays including a monster block on Jo Lual-Acuil Jr.
But Cooks and Dellavedova were who Goorjian knew he could count on.
"You go back to the start of the year and Xavier's free throws and Delly's threes (received a lot of attention), but they're world class and this is for all the marbles," Goorjian said.
"(They were) huge, both of them. Delly hit some big threes but even more importantly with the group I started, my secondary ball carrier was Xavier and the ball didn’t get back in his (Davis) hand.
"But when I brought Delly in, it got him on track and once we figured out what we're doing during the game, and by the end of the game we got the right guys setting the on-balls with him, and off the ball we got the ball back to him and we worked it out."
Cooks did have some horror free-throw shooting nights early this season including going 1/10 against Melbourne United. Before the Kings started their 11-game winning streak to close the regular season, he made just 43/96 at 45 per cent from the line.
However, Goorjian knew the work he was putting in and also knew that confidence in the rest of his game would flow into feeling better at the foul line. That paid off in Game 1 where he went 4/5 at the stripe but most importantly made all three crucially inside the last two minutes.
"A big part of the practices are easy baskets so we've been working a lot on the rebounding aspects and playing the defences without fouling, and shooting free throws," Goorjian said.
"We're not talking a lot about it, but we have little routines for each guy and we've done a lot of skill work on it, and then at the end of all our practices we've had like 20 minutes of shooting and have made sure there's a free-throw focus.
"But those looked good coming out of his hand and you get a comfort by doing, and he's seeing the ball go through and knows he's put in the work and there's more of a confidence there than there has been."
The Kings had done a tremendous job in the three wins over the Wildcats of keeping Kristian Doolittle in check, but a lot of that was the work of Bul Kuol who is now injured.
Goorjian likely came into the game thinking that Cooks, Craig, Galloway and Maluach would be his first, second, third and fourth options as match ups for the Wildcats powerhouse.
However, when he took over with 17 points in the third quarter, Goorjian turned to Dellavedova. He did as well as anyone could have the rest of the way to enhance his influence on top of his playmaking to help Davis, and his shooting.
"We put Delly on Doolittle and that ended up being kinda like our best match up," Goorjian said.
"Doolittle is really hard to stop and you saw at the start of the game that we tried to double him and rotate with some guys that we thought weren’t deadly knocked down threes.
"Then we started to stay with the ball pressure in the back court and stick with the rotations, and stop flying around, and all our match ups either he was too big or a little too quick for.
"He's a hard, hard, hard match up and a lot of the coaches have talked about Bryce or Kendric, and he and Sobey are in that mix and he's different.
"He's elite and we didn’t do a great job and had a problem there, but Delly did seem to do the best job out of anyone that we tried on him."
Craig was the last piece of the puzzle for this Kings team of NBL26 with the 538-game NBA veteran and former NBL Defensive Player of the Year arriving for the last eight games.
He did play a good role averaging 13.0 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.0 assists including putting up 26 points against Adelaide, but Goorjian always knew he had more to give.
That's where the FIBA break was perfect for him in particular just to get fully into game shape and condition. It paid off on Wednesday night where he scored 15 of his 20 points in the game in the first half when the Kings needed his offence the most.
"TC offensively with this break that I keep talking about, the break was really good for him," Goorjian said.
"I kept saying that he's kinda leggy and he got some really good work in over a 20-day period and games, rest, travel made that difficult before that once he got here.
"You want games for everybody else but for him, that was a really good formula and he had a great one tonight."