Nick Rakocevic is playing the basketball of his life to open NBL27 but all he cares about is winning with the Adelaide 36ers and a measure of revenge is on his mind ahead of a return to Sydney on Sunday.
Rakocevic was a key piece for the Sixers in their run to the Championship Series a season ago, but he has had to take on even greater responsibility so far in NBL27 with Isaac Humphries sidelined with a knee injury.
Not only has he stepped up, but he is starring with 20.5 points and 11.7 rebounds a game on 63 per cent field goal shooting, but the team isn't winning and that's all he cares about.
Rakocevic didn’t return to Adelaide with the vision of dominating personally, he came back wanting to win a championship after being only seconds away from doing that last season.
Now it's a return to where it all ended last year in Sydney this Sunday when Rakocevic and the 36ers try to arrest a three-game losing slide following Wednesday night's home loss to Melbourne United against the league-leading, fresh and undefeated Kings.
"We've got to go get 'em and that's all the motivation we need," Rakocevic said.
"That's where it ended on the last game of the season with the championship and that's all the motivation that anybody on the team should have.
"I think it's a personal game for everybody that was part of that and that's 90 per cent of the guys.
"That's how I look at it and that should be our mentality going into that game is they ended it last year for us and took it away from us, and we need to go there and we need to make a stand."
Following his college career at the University of Southern California, Rakocevic has had a good professional career. The only season where his numbers rival what he's doing to start NBL27 was at Magnolia in the Philippines with 21.7 points and 17.9 rebounds a game.
But in all due respect, the NBL is at a different level, so to be doing what he's doing now with the 36ers is mighty impressive including his 33 points, 14 rebounds and two assists on 15/25 shooting in his 33 minutes despite some early foul trouble on Wednesday.
He is still finding areas to improve, though, including going 3/8 at the free-throw line to be now 9/28 at 32 per cent for the season, but at the end of the day, he'd trade wins for numbers any day of the week.
"It's great that I'm playing pretty well, but at the end of the day I came back here to win a championship," Rakocevic said.
"That was my reasoning for coming back here and we were so close last year, and that was the main thing. Although I'm playing well, to me it's not enough and I can do so much better and way more.
"Starting with my free throws, I'll bring that up again, and I just think it's always good and all when you're playing well and the ball's going in, but I came here to win with this group of guys and that's my main focus.
"I'm just trying to rally behind everybody else because I know what they can do, and we just haven’t shown it as a team yet. But I'm fully confident that we're gonna figure that out."
Looking back on Wednesday's game against Melbourne at home, Adelaide were trying to bounce back from losses in Round 3 to the Illawarra Hawks and the New Zealand Breakers.
The Sixers then made a horror start against United falling down 10 at quarter-time and then 18 by half-time while falling down by as much as 20 through the evening.
But they did turn things around in the second half and got all the way back within three points late in the piece but couldn’t quite get over the hump and ended up losing by five to lose a third straight to now be 2-4 on the season.
Paired with Rakocevic's big night, six-time MVP Bryce Cotton also had 33 points and nine assists, but they just didn’t get enough help throughout the night until Zylan Cheatham and John Jenkins III fired up in the last quarter.
Rakocevic was proud that his teammates stepped up to fight back to give themselves a chance late in the game and hopes they can now get closer to doing that for a full 40 minutes moving forward.
"It always feels good playing here and I love the environment and the Entertainment Centre," Rakocevic said.
"It's always a blessing to play out in front of 10,000 fans and obviously we didn’t get the result we wanted, but I feel like the team in the second half was incredible.
"The fight to come back and not quit on each other and hold people accountable, and then those people going out there to do what they had to do, I'm super proud of the guys.
"I think that if we play like that in the first half it's a different story for us and I'm really excited about that, and there's some things we need to clean up, but I'm really proud of the guys how they battled in the second half."
Rakocevic has had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the officials so far in his time in the NBL, but he also realises just how important he is to the 36ers right now and can't afford to pick up any unnecessary fouls.
He did have two early fouls on Wednesday night, but did a reasonable job of reigning himself in after despite the frustrations and it is a constant work in progress.
"Obviously, it was a physical game and I know that coach and the team need me to stay out there so I can't get into foul trouble," Rakocevic said.
"So when I have my moments like that it's best for me to go away from the situation and just kinda run away or go talk to coach or grab BC rather than retaliate on the refs.
"I still have to do a better job of that because a couple slipped today, but I would say the process has definitely been that for me this year to try and calm down and control the emotions as best I can."