Breakers to head home with nothing to play for
The Breakers’ homecoming is shaping as a fizzer, with their Australian NBL playoff prospects set to be toast long before the team sets foot in New Zealand for the first time in five months.
Monday’s night’s lethargic and disappointing 75-67 loss to Tyler Harvey and the Illawarra Hawks in Launceston leaves the Breakers on the brink of effective post-season elimination – with still more than a month of their season to run, including those seven straight games in New Zealand, starting May 20 in Auckland.
At 9-17 they face having to win all 10 of their remaining games to force their way into the top four. Nine might do it at a pinch, but they would need the hoops gods to flip a few things their way for the first time this problematic season.
The reality is the Breakers are no chance of going either 10-0 or 9-1 from here. They are simply not good enough.
The loss to the Hawks was deflating, given the stakes. There were few signs of urgency or intensity, and plenty of fatigue and flatness. Yes, it was their fifth game in a 10-day stretch, and, yes, those hard rims of the Launceston Silverdome may not be their preferred ‘‘home’’ venue, but sometimes you have to rise above the obstacles.
The Breakers have not been able to respond to theirs in 2021, though to give them due credit there have been a lot of them in an unprecedented season that would have tested the most resilient of groups.
The Kiwi club has essentially been on the road since middecember, living out of hotels, airports and training facilities, and has had an injury toll that has ratcheted up the difficulty factor. It has been a tough row to hoe and more often than not it has looked it for a group that has struggled mightily for fluency.
Monday night was an example of that. They were right in it against the Hawks, locked at 40-40 at the half, down by just a single point at the final break, and then they scored just two points in the first six-and-a-half minutes of the final term and gifted the game to Illawarra.
That was their season essentially gone with barely a whimper. Tai Webster and Tom Abercrombie notched 14 points apiece, William Mcdowell-white 13, but no one stepped up when it mattered.
Once again the Breakers felt the bite of injury. Star American Levi Randolph, fresh off his game-winning turn against the Wildcats, missed the Hawks clash with a minor hamstring tear suffered when he went up for the clincher against Perth.
The Breakers should have been good enough to shake off Randolph’s absence. They patently weren’t.
They couldn’t stop Tyler Harvey in the first half as he poured in 21 of his 29 points, despite it being exceedingly obvious the Hawks would only go as far as he took them. Then when their offence dried up in the second they were left with no answers.
Even now, with the season into its final stretch, this poorly conceived Breakers group is still figuring out how to play together. It’s why that run of seven straight games on Kiwi soil will be little more than a PR exercise – the playoffs already out of reach.
Next up are the Wildcats in Perth on Sunday, followed by visits to South East Melbourne and Illawarra before the return home. That final nail in the coffin should be hammered home soon.