The Story of the 2019 NBL Canada Championship Game
While no one can be sure of what will happen when a finals series begin, there was one certainty of the 2019 NBL Canada Finals when it reached its conclusion: the league would have a new champion.
Neither of the two sides contesting the title of the league's eighth season, the Moncton Magic and the St. John's Edge, had made the finals before. In just their second season in operation, it was already a big achievement for St. John's to make it this far so early in their history.
The Magic, meanwhile, finished the regular season with the best record of all ten teams and gaining more and more momentum throughout the first two rounds of the playoffs. Receiving national attention for their exploits, they entered the finals as favourites, but success in the last series of the post-season was not assured.
On May 16th 2019 the fourth game of the 2019 finals took place at the Mile One Center in St. John's. The home team had a rough time in the first three games, with Shaquille Keith and Glen Davis recovering from injuries while Carl Davis and Junior Cadougan were both ruled out of game four completely. They were now looking to avoid being the first NBLC team to be swept in the finals, particularly on their home court.
The Magic had dominated the first three games in the finals, with commanding and consistent victories on both their home court and on their first trip to St. John's. Staying in Newfoundland for game four, they were looking to cap off their record-setting year in the best way possible.
At 7pm the game tipped off and Billy White began Moncton's campaign to end the series in four games. He opened the scoring with a three on the team's first possession, following it up with another while Glen Davis found the first open looks closer to the basket for St John’s.
The Magic resumed their scoring streak with threes from Corey Allmond and Trey Kell, which gave them the first double-digit lead of the game. Kell followed this up with six points in a row while the missed attempts kept piling up for the Edge. The Magic then embarked on a 13-2 run, at the end of which they led by double the Edge’s total.
Following on from the sixty-point opening quarter, the Edge began the second with six unanswered points, after which Nick Evans responded with a 7-0 run all on his own. Shortly after Trey Kell restored Moncton’s twenty-point lead, made even higher by Billy White, while Desmond Lee, Shaquille Keith and Russell Byrd kept finding it hard to instigate the fight back for the home team.
A final three-pointer from Kell put the Magic ahead by twenty-two points at half-time. He then opened the second-half scoring, before a dry spell for Moncton allowed Lee, Isaiah Tate and Murphy Burnatowski to cut St. John’s deficit to single digits midway through the third. Jason Calliste ended the cold streak for the Magic and he and Kell restored the double-digit advantage for their team, with Corey Allmond dropping a layup which saw Moncton end the third quarter ahead 101-89.
It was now do or die for St. John’s, who opened the final quarter with six unanswered points that Moncton responded to with seven of their own. Threes from Jared Nickens and Glen Davis and a layup by Jarryn Skeete made it a six-point game but the drama was cut short by a trio of successive three-point shots and a three-point play by Kell, which saw the Magic go into a sixteen-point lead.
Not about to go down without a fight, Desmond Lee put up the next sixteen points for St. John’s, bringing his total to a game-high 43 to go with 13 total rebounds. On the other end Kell led the Edge to more unstoppable offence right to the final buzzer. At which his total in the game came to 41 and the NBL Canada championship was the Moncton Magic’s.
The team had made history for the city and province of New Brunswick, bringing home their first national title. After leading the Magic in the first three games, his final forty-one point performance earned Kell an award all of his own, the coveted Most Valuable Player of the Finals title. For days the buzz of this victory reverberated over both in Moncton and St. John's - their mayor Danny Breen honoring a bet that he would wear a Magic jersey in session should they win in the finals.
The Magic looked set to repeat this finals victory the following season and again setting the best regular season record were poised to complete the two-peat, but the premature end to play meant they were denied the chance to do so. Nothing will ever take away what they achieved in 2019, commemorated by their name forever engraved on the NBLC championship trophy.
