Breakers scoring spread may hurt
COULD it be that the greatest strength of the Australian NBL title-chasing New Zealand Breakers might also be their biggest weakness?
It’s a question worth asking as coach Paul Henare’s Aucklandbased team head into a short Christmas break (they resume on December 29 in Adelaide) in a most promising position. With their scratchy victory over the Kings in Sydney on Thursday night, they tuck into their Christmas dinners with an 11-5 record that is surpassed only by the 10-4 Perth Wildcats.
Granted, it’s not the runaway 9-1 they were strutting along at heading into the international window in late November, and four defeats in six outings since have highlighted shortcomings in the four-time champions and grand finalists for five of the past seven seasons.
But it’s a record that, frankly, they would have snatched out of your hand if you’d offered it before the season started. And one that puts them in a strong position from which to push on and secure at least home court for the semifinals. So, why the angst? Well, the recent slump has certainly shown the Breakers to be fallible when things aren’t humming. And they haven’t exactly been in lock-down defence mode of late, giving up 34 final-quarter points at home against Adelaide a week ago and conceding 95 in total to the struggling Kings.
Henare is a defence-first coach and he will want to improve that part of their game significantly as they head into the back-end of their season. Protecting the paint better and containing penetration would be two obvious points of emphasis.
Also, if they have a strength, it’s been the nice spread of scoring through their nine rotation players, with anyone capable of stepping up and carrying the load on any given night.
On Thursday it was backup centre Rob Loe with his 23 points on nine-of-16 shooting. Other times it’s been imports Edgar Sosa and D J Newbill, or Tom Abercrombie, or Kirk Penney, or Alex Pledger, or even dynamic backup guard and most improved player candidate Shea Ili.
The Breakers have only one player in the league’s top 10 scorers (Sosa 10th at 15.2ppg) and GETTY IMAGES two in the first 20 (Newbill is 15th at 13.9), but all nine of their rotation players are averaging five points or better, and five are running at double-figures (Abercrombie 10.8, Penney 10.3 and Ili 10.1).
This is a well-balanced team who play an equal-opportunity offence. It makes it very, very difficult for opposing teams to shut down their specific threats, because they never really know from game to game where it’s going to come from. But here’s where it gets tricky. Over their December slump, the Breakers have decidedly lacked a go-to guy when things have got tough. Someone like Sydney’s Jerome Randle, Perth’s Bryce Cotton, Illawarra’s Rotnei Clarke or Melbourne’s Casey Prather.
Men who get buckets when their team needs them. Men who can erupt for 20-plus on a regular basis.
As the season gets serious, it would be nice to think that one or two Breakers could step up and spark this team when they really need a basket. Sosa is the most capable with his ability off the dribble, but Abercrombie, Penney and Newbill are all capable of delivering on a more consistent basis.
Wins will edge them ever closer to the playoffs and then home advantage. But the emergence of a scoring spearhead could be just as important as they look to build into a unit capable of adding to those four championship banners in their rafters.