Pride on line for Breakers

It was probably a good thing that fiery Breakers coach Paul Henare spent the bulk of this week out of Auckland attending a high performance coach’s seminar in the capital.

Both he and his embattled team probably needed a bit of space after recent events.

Following the embarrassing 84-57 defeat to the Kings in Sydney last Sunday, leaving his team’s ANBL playoff hopes on life support, Henare let his team have it with a brutal assessment of what was easily their worst performance of the season.

‘‘All I can think about right now is how embarrassed I am for my club,’’ Henare reflected after a woeful 25-turnover performance against the undermanned Kings. ‘‘I’m disgusted in what we put on the floor.

‘‘I don’t know if we can put that behind us. There are too many things there ... there is an underlying quit in us right now. When things get tough I saw a lot of quit out there and that’s concerning. If we go on to Adelaide next week and perform like that we’ll lose by 50.’’

The Breakers players have had the week to chew on those words, and Henare (back with the team) has had the distance to reflect on how they might best approach two remaining games, starting in Adelaide tonight (7.30pm, NZT), that are as much about restoring pride as they are trying to conjure something magical out of an unlikely playoff scenario.

The best the Breakers can manage now is a 14-14 finish by somehow lowering minor premiers Adelaide at their house and then backing up with a home victory over Melbourne in their regular season finale next Friday night.

That could − at a stretch − sneak them into the fourth and final playoff spot, providing a complicated series of results elsewhere fall their way.

But right now the Breakers are thinking only of the obligation they have to show some backbone in a tricky visit to Joey Wright’s high-flying Sixers.