Without their starting back court of Corin Henry and James Harvey, as well as starting centre Ian Crosswhite the Kings were always going to find it tough playing the Wildcats at the Perth Arena.
Combined Henry, Harvey and Crosswhite have averaged over 34 points, 13 rebounds and six assists a game this season for Sydney, and the end result was a thumping 83-56 by Perth.
That gives the Wildcats 11 straight wins at their new home of the Perth Arena since losing on the building's opening night for basketball to the Adelaide 36ers.
It is also Perth's 10th straight win over Sydney since the Kings returned to the NBL for the 2010-11 season after a two-year hiatus.
However, while the Wildcats can't go up or down from second position on the NBL ladder, the Kings currently sit fourth and whether or not they stay there and play finals for the first time since 2007-08 will likely come down to next Friday's clash in Wollongong against the current third-place Hawks.
With the Melbourne Tigers still a good chance to return to the NBL's top four over the last three weeks of the season, there could very well be only room for one of the New South Wales teams, and that could be decided next Friday at the WIN Entertainment Centre.
That's the way Kings coach Heal is now looking at it following the 27-point loss in Perth, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t impressed by the fight shown from his team with the absence of Henry, Harvey and Crosswhite.
MVP-candidate Ben Madgen was hounded incessantly by Perth defenders Damian Martin and Kevin Lisch, and was limited to just 2-of-14 shooting from the field but found a way to score 16 points of which 12 came in the second half. He also had five turnovers.
Kevin White, Daniel Joyce and Luke Martin, in particular, were all asked to play significantly more minutes than they have had to all season and Heal was proud of the fight shown from all nine of his players.
All of which aside from Madgen, Graeme Dann (four points, four rebounds), Aaron Bruce (13 points, three assists) and Darnell Lazare (16 points, nine boards) are now established performers in the NBL.
"We will take something from that game. Six of our nine guys are getting ready to play in the state leagues. That was a good result tonight and our guys were great, and we will definitely take positives out of that for Wollongong," Heal said.
"I'm really proud of the guy's efforts. I thought they did really well and I thought we did a great job overall on Lisch, and made other people beat us, but they killed us inside in the first half.
"We got a lot of open shots that we just didn’t knock down and you need to hit them if you are going to beat a good side on their home court. It didn’t happen tonight, but our guys competed and we will take something out of it for our big game on Friday."
While it certainly had no impact on the result and Heal didn’t want to get into specifics, he did echo what other clubs have said about the difficulties of playing in Perth and what helps the Wildcats to an imposing home advantage.
"I think the Tigers probably spoke on behalf of everybody," Heal said.
"They are a good team and play hard, but we agree with what everybody else says and we don’t need to comment on too many things on why they are even tougher over here."
Meanwhile, the Wildcats did as they needed to get another good hit out under their belts to bounce back from a surprise loss in Cairns last week.
The Wildcats remain locked into second position with a 20-6 record with home matches against the Taipans and New Zealand Breakers to round out their regular season.
Shawn Redhage top-scored for Perth with 23 points on the back of 8-of-12 shooting from the field and 3-of-4 from three-point range.
Big man Matt Knight made the most of Sydney not having Crosswhite in the middle to finish with 19 points and eight rebounds as well with Rhys Carter chipping in with 10 points in his 200th NBL match.
The 'Cats dominated the second quarter against the Kings with 20 points to six, and their efforts at both ends of the floor in that period delighted coach Rob Beveridge, but he was rather luke warm with his summation of the rest of the game from his team.
"I thought in the first quarter we just fouled them way too much and that's why they got their 20 points, but as soon as we eliminated that we played locked down defence and it was very impressive," Beveridge said.
"It was then like we shut up shop. When you are up by 20 at half-time you always wonder what you are playing for against a wounded team, but they played with a lot of heart and pride. But what I want from our team is that killer instinct that when you have your foot on the throat you keep going.
"I know that's what New Zealand do and that's why they continue to pull games out of the bag and we have to develop that mentality. We've shown glimpses of that, but it's not consistent enough."