The much awaited playoffs of the 2019 ABL season will finally start for the Singapore Slingers as they take one the Macau Black Bears at the OCBC Arena. As the third-ranked team after the elimination round, Singapore will have home-court advantage against Macau.
The Black Bears are a fiery offensive team. Led by the outstanding Mikh McKinney and now with Dewarick Spencer sharing the offensive load, they can explode at any given time, specially from the outside. They also have a solid man in the middle in Ryan Watkins who is a guaranteed double-double each game.
Defense has been the identity of the Slingers this entire season and it needs to be on point once again as they take on Macau.
Led by one of the possible candidates for Defensive Player of the Year in Jerran Young, they need to make sure that the they’ll be able to stay home on McKinney and Spencer. When they get going with their shots, they become twice as deadly as they can also start making plays and involving the locals such as Jenning Leung, Nathan Yu, and Derek King from the three-point range.
In the Slingers’ two wins against Macau in the regular season, John Fields also played a big role so he needs to be on top of his game again in the quarterfinals.
However, the main guy for Singapore will still be Xavier Alexander who is now the top scorer in ABL history. He averages 21.5 points, 10.0 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 2.3 steals, doing everything for the Slingers in his fourth stint with them.
The locals will also need to chip in specially Delvin Goh from the starters and Ng Hanbin off the bench.
Singapore worked hard to gain the home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs and they’ll need to keep it at all cost with a win against Macau at the OCBC Arena.
