Kings Invest Heavily In Off Court Signings, Including 3x NBA Champion Luc Longley

The Sydney Kings have secured the services of 3-time NBA Champion, Luc Longley, as a special advisor to the NBL franchise.

Longley, who is regarded as an icon of Australian basketball, brings with him a wealth of experience as a player, a coach, an NBL Club owner and joins the Club to work alongside Head Coach Will Weaver, CEO Chris Pongrass and Chairman Paul Smith.

Following TSE’s acquisition of full ownership of the Kings in April this year, the Club has taken bold steps in bringing in strong character people to help take it to the next level.

“For us, this process has been about bringing really high-quality people like Luc into the Kings so that he can have an impact across the business in a number of areas,” Sydney Kings Chairman, Paul Smith, said.

“We’re a club that cares about these things, and we think it will start to show externally as much as it will impact us internally”.

“Luc already has a strong relationship with Will through their time together at the Boomers, but we see this role being much broader than that.

“Luc’s got a terrific knowledge of the basketball landscape both in Australia and globally, and we’re looking forward to utilising that within the team and front office”.

As well as the appointment of Longley, former Perth assistant coach, Adam Forde, will join the Kings after helping lead the Wildcats to four Championships.

“Adam has proven Championship experience and has helped build one of the most elite programs in the league” Kings Head Coach, Will Weaver, said.

“He’s done a little bit of everything as a player developer, a strategist, an analyst, and is noted around the league as one of the best team-player coaches out there”.

Also stepping into the Assistant Coach roles are James Duncan and former-King Aleks Maric, while Toby Banfield joins the Club as the new Head of Performance, and current Boomers Physio David Hillard and his company Zone 34 will also join the team.

“From a high-performance and medical standpoint we want to be the leaders in the league in that space, and create an environment that players can come to Sydney and flourish,” Kings CEO, Chris Pongrass said.

“We want our athletes to know that they have the best resources available to them.

“From our young draft prospects through to the veterans, we want all of them to be able to develop and succeed so that they leave here better than when they arrived in all aspects of their game.”

“We’ve taken big steps forward this off-season to improve and we think it will show.”