Battling Breakers not down on belief

Breakers coach Paul Henare is usually a strict observer of the well-worn ‘‘one game at a time’’ mantra used by professional sports teams.

But to use another cliche´ the Breakers head coach is becoming increasingly familiar with, desperate times call for desperate measures.

With eight rounds remaining, the four-time champion New Zealand basketball franchise find themselves pinned to the bottom of the Australian NBL ladder with an 8-12 record.

Asked what his injury-hit team had to do to turn things around ahead of their game against the Sydney Kings at Vector Arena in Auckland on Friday night, Henare cut straight to the chase.

‘‘It’s pretty simple,’’ he said after training yesterday. ‘‘We have to win close to every game.

‘‘If we win every game we’re pretty sure we’d be in [the playoffs], seven of eight would give us a good chance and anything less we’d be counting on count-backs. It’s a tough equation but one we still believe is well within our grasp.

‘‘It’s not something we like to do, look too far ahead but I felt it was important to recognise what’s in front of us and the first hurdle in that eight step process is Sydney.’’

Successfully taking that first step, even against a Kings team who come into the clash on a threegame losing skid, is not expected to be easy for a variety of reasons.

The Breakers are coming off two losses, the most recent an 18-point home court humbling at the hands of league-leading Ade- laide on Sunday, and have two new American imports still getting to know their team-mates and the playbook.

Stretch forward Paul Carter has played just three games, while point guard Kevin Dillard made his debut in Sunday’s loss after only arriving in the country two days previous.

According to Henare, though, the biggest obstacle his team had to overcome could not be found in the myriad of basketball statistics columns.

After the Breakers gave up 113 points, including 62 in the first half, and were out-rebounded 44-29 against Adelaide, he said a lack of effort was all too clear in their pretraining film session.

‘‘Hopefully that touched a nerve because it did with me.

‘‘For the first time in a while there were plays we gave up and quit on and that’s unacceptable. I’ll back [the players] to the hills but the proof is in pudding and there were possessions where it was just a bit too hard, we quit on plays or weren’t on the same page.

‘‘That’s something we definitely can’t afford to have moving forward.’’

Although he hoped that effort element was already remedied, Henare acknowledged finding better team continuity was a work in progress having two imports with just four games for the club between them.

That was no clearer during yesterday’s film session, where at one point during the game some Breakers were playing zone defence and others were playing man-to-man.

Working on that cohesion with Dillard and Carter, particularly on defence, was the key focus of the next few days.