Lightning defeat Titans, earn NBLC title

The Lightning capped off a dominant season Wednesday by sweeping the KW Titans in the 2022 NBLC Finals, earning their fifth league title in franchise history.

The Lightning hoist the 2022 NBLC trophy at the Kitchener Auditorium Wednesday, June 1. (Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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It was a long time coming.

Not since 2019 had the NBL of Canada crowned a champion, and not since 2018-19 had the London Lightning hoisted the trophy. But on Wednesday night in Kitchener, the Lightning capped off their dominant 2022 season with a 97-96 win over the KW Titans, completing the sweep of the best-of-five Finals series and winning their fifth league title in franchise history.

Terry Thomas, who was named Finals MVP, scored a team-high 25 points (on 11-of-23 shooting) in 46 minutes. Chris Jones had 16 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists, while Amir Williams had 18 points in just 17 minutes.

The win closed out an extremely strong return-from-pandemic season for the London Lightning, who went 20-4 during the regular season and then a perfect 6-0 in the playoffs, sweeping both the Windsor Express in the semi-finals and then the Titans in the finals.

Not that closing it out was easy.

Coming off a down-to-the-wire Game 2, in which the Lightning were fortunate to pull out a 115-110 overtime win, the Titans gave them all they could handle Wednesday night. And essentially without their best player.

Already down two of its stars, Eric Ferguson and Chad Frazier, KW also lost the brightest star of them all, league MVP Joel Kindred, who went down in the first half with a hip injury (he played only 11 minutes, going scoreless). Still, the Titans refused to give up.

Trailing by 17 after one quarter, and 12 after the third, the Titans outplayed the visitors in the final quarter and took their first lead of the game, 93-92, with 2:55 remaining.

But the Lightning, once again, managed to come out on the winning side. London re-took the lead on a pair of Mareik Isom free throws, and they wouldn’t give the lead back. On the next possession, Chris Jones drove to the hoop for a big layup to put London ahead by three with 1:06 left.

The Titans’ Jesse Jones, who scored 27 points on the night, responded with a layup of his own, but KW was then forced to foul with the time on the clock dwindling. Isom made one of his two free throws to put the Lightning ahead 97-95. At the other end, Jabari Craig was fouled with 0.7 seconds left. He made the first free throw – and missed the second.

“Those last two games were just insane,” Lightning head coach Doug Plumb said following Wednesday’s contest. “It could have gone either way. I said to Neil (Foreman, KW coach), ‘You guys could have beat us. It could be 2-1 the other way.’

“I thought that we got outplayed in some capacity, that we got out-executed in some capacity, but when it came down to getting one critical stop, or getting a bucket when you really needed it, we just pulled it out.”

Early on, it looked like Game 3 was headed towards a blowout. London’s Amir Williams scored the game’s first nine points. And then it became the Terry Thomas show. The league’s Sixth Man of the Year and Canadian Player of the Year scored four straight buckets, including a pair of three-pointers, to give the Lightning a 23-10 lead. It was 31-14 after the first quarter.

Thomas continued to score in bunches in the second and had all 25 of his points by halftime. Once again, he led the team in minutes, and his performance, which included eight rebounds, earned him Finals MVP honours.

“This team is incredible,” Thomas said following the win. “We work hard, each and every day. We have our ups and downs, but I feel like the reason we win games is … when it gets down to the fourth quarter, we understand who needs the ball and we’re just very locked in.”

On Wednesday, that meant some important buckets down the stretch from Isom, Cam Forte and Jordan Burns, the latter finishing with 13 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and a pair of steals. And it meant staying locked in himself — for a full 46 minutes. In the three games against the Titans, the veteran Thomas played 144 out of a possible 149 minutes.

“Terry’s just tough. You just know Terry’s gonna show up to play,” said Plumb. “He’s going to give everything he has. He’s a really prideful guy.”

“When I made this team, the number one criteria was that you have to be tough,” Plumb added. “In the playoffs, especially when you play a team this many times, it often just comes down to straight up toughness and who’s going to execute in that moment, or who’s going to win that one-on-one battle, and I thought our guys did that.”