Broken Breakers on the brink
Not so much unbreakable, as nigh on unsalvageable.
The ill-fated, at times shambolic, New Zealand Breakers’ season in the Australian National Basketball League hit a new low in Adelaide on Sunday night when the Kiwi club crashed to a dispiriting 117-100 defeat to Joey Wright’s 36ers that sees them plunge to 2-8 – their worst start to a campaign since their debut in 2003-04 when they also lost eight of their first 10 games en route to a 12-21 record.
Head coach Dan Shamir was certainly not sugar-coating the precarious place his team finds itself in after losing its best player, Corey Webster, to what looked like a major ankle injury early in the second quarter.
Scans have cleared Webster of a fracture, though it’s likely the ligament damage suffered will keep him out at least two to three weeks. By then this season that teeters on the brink could well have fallen all the way into the toilet.
They are already dealing with the long-term absences of Rob Loe and Scotty Hopson (though the latter is due back any day) and have only just got Finn Delany back on the court.
With the equally low-flying Illawarra Hawks (2-8) up next in Auckland on Saturday night, the Breakers have reached an impossibly early make-or-break juncture they will have to negotiate without their one player [Webster] capable of getting buckets in bunches.
‘‘I’m not happy about anything,’’ Shamir said after his team’s latest loss. ‘‘We were down 20 at halftime . . . we’ve got enough things to look at to be concerned about before we can be happy about anything from this game.
‘‘The last quarter was what we call garbage time. I’d like everybody to think they’re not doing enough. That’s me, the other coaches, the players, everybody is not doing enough to create something better than we’re creating.
‘‘We need to go home and do a little bit of thinking on what we can do better.’’
With Webster out, the Breakers are going to need a dramatic turnaround to halt this losing skid.
Sek Henry, who was sub-par for much of the Adelaide game, has to step up and be the import his CV advertises. They need RJ Hampton to stop falling asleep on defence, Brandon Ashley to stay out of foul trouble and Tom Abercrombie and Delany to play like the seasoned internationals they are. They also desperately need Hopson back to provide the offensive spark in Webster’s absence.
On that front there was at least some positive news, with Hopson confirming yesterday he was ready to return to court to lend a hand in the crisis.
‘‘The knee is great,’’ he said.‘‘I’m looking forward to a good week of practice and helping the guys out so we we can get things going on the right track.’’