Breakers coach: No excuses

Breakers coach Dan Shamir was not playing the blame game in the wake of a frustrating, and possibly fatal, home defeat to the Adelaide 36ers in Auckland on Sunday.

Shamir certainly had aspects he could have used in his, and his team’s, defence in the wake of a 99-96 last-play defeat that sends his team tumbling to 4-10 for the Australian NBL season and needing to go at least 10-4 from here on to have any hope of squeezing into the playoff mix.

All things considered it’s a highly unlikely prospect for a club that is 4-4 at home this season and a woeful 0-6 on the road. Considering that after Friday’s clash against South East Melbourne Phoenix in Christchurch they have five straight road games, it is not inconceivable that the Breakers could be toast by the new year.

Still, Shamir had to be tempted to point to the injury bug that continues to run through his side, with leading scorer Corey Webster joining teenage Next Stars point guard RJ Hampton on the sideline for this one after picking up a back strain in the lead-in to the game.

Not once this season have the

Breakers managed to get a fullstrength roster on the court, and for the vast majority of the campaign they’ve had multiple starters sitting games out – a situation that tempted them to roll the dice with Glen Rice Jr, and we all know how that turned out.

They also fell horribly on the wrong side of some questionable refereeing on Sunday. It happens, but it cost the Kiwi outfit dearly as they had to manage, not only a minus-15 free-throw attempts disparity, but foul trouble to Sek Henry, Rob Loe, Brandon Ashley and Scotty Hopson.

So bad was it that Shamir picked up a rare technical foul for his reaction to one particularly horrible call, which he later attempted to put into perspective.

‘‘I very rarely get tee’d,’’ Shamir said post-game. ‘‘The last three years I can count maybe two technical. I very rarely talk to the referees. Referees are also professional and they’re in the process of getting better and analysing what they’re doing.

‘‘As a coach you do communicate with them on a professional basis and I also look at the games and calls very carefully. I know good people are working on refereeing in this league, and as a newcomer I don’t want to tell anybody else how to do their job. I need to focus on my job. ‘‘Players and coaches expect referees to make some mistakes, but do it in proportion of coaches. Coaches can make mistakes too, but if if you go into a game with 10 bad mistakes it’s really bad for a coach. I’m sure this is what referees expect from themselves.’’

Henry, who played just 21 minutes and was shackled for the first half by some questionable calls, was a little more direct in his appraisal of the officiating. The lefty guard was a huge part of the Breakers’ second-half surge, which nearly stole the game from 20 down in the second, with 20 points on eight-of-11 shooting.

‘‘The three [first-half] fouls was frustrating,’’ he said. ‘‘Take a look at the fouls – it was crazy. I know one of the fouls was actually a foul but the other two were ridiculous. I’m a rookie in this league and maybe I ain’t earned no respect from them.’’

For all that, and even factoring in the absence of the in-form Webster who had just returned from an ankle injury, Shamir said the Breakers had to take the defeat on the chin.

With Tom Abercrombie producing an outstanding performance (a season-high 22 points on eight-of-10 shooting) and six players in total scoring in doublefigures, the coach said he still had the personnel to get the job done.

‘‘We have missed a lot of players in critical positions and had to play people out of position. But I don’t think that’s the situation right now. We have a functional roster.

‘‘Maybe they don’t have experience of playing together like other teams at this point of the season because we were not healthy.

‘‘But these kind of injuries are part of the game. We’re not at a point where we should make any excuses.’’

‘‘As a newcomer I don’t want to tell anybody else how to do their job. I need to focus on my job.’’

Breakers coach Dan Shamir