Breakers coach must up the ante with local talent
Mody Maor is a heck of a basketball coach, and possibly an even better recruiter of offshore talent. But there is one nagging weakness he must fix if the New Zealand Breakers are to continue their resurgence under his watch.
Maor has just finished season two of his tenure as head coach of the Aucklandbased Australian NBL club – and it’s hard to mark him too harshly for a second straight year of playoff hoops, even if he could not repeat the grand final heroics of 2022-23.
The Breakers exited one step shy of the semifinals earlier this week when they lost the final play-in qualifier 88-85 to the Illawarra Hawks – a game they had every chance of snatching at the death, but in which they ultimately paid the price for another weak effort on the boards, too many turnovers and fouls, and Lady Luck deserting them once again.
Maor called his Breakers of 23-24 the “best team that never was”, and it was hard to fault his logic. He actually had a decent roster, but never got to play it in its entirety after a catalogue of injuries undermined that vain hope.
The final straw was the shoulder and ankle problems that hobbled Will McDowell-White through the post-season, though the Achilles rupture suffered by ex-NBA standout Anthony Lamb was the decisive blow.
Still, the Breakers stumbled into the post-season with a 13-15 record, and then upset the back-to-back champion Sydney Kings with a performance for the ages at Qudos Bank Arena to briefly ignite hopes of more playoff glory.
It was not to be. The undermanned
Breakers could not capture lightning in a bottle again in Wollongong, and their reliance on brilliant combo guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright cost them as the Hawks harried the fabulous import into a 5-of-17 shooting night, with a half-dozen turnovers thrown in.
The crux of the matter is if Maor had been able to access a starting five of Jackson-Cartwright, a fit McDowellWhite, Lamb, Zylan Cheatham and Mangok Mathiang, with Izayah Le’afa, Finn Delany (who never caught a rhythm in a problematic campaign blighted by
The sad fact is that the Breakers’ “local” contingent were just not good enough ... Maor must take that one on the chin.
injury), Tom Abercrombie and Mantas Rubštavičius doing their thing off the bench, he would probably still be battling for the championship.
Injuries happen in sport. They’re an inevitability. You have to build rosters, and mindsets, to deal with them. To pivot when your circumstances change. And the sad fact is that the Breakers’ “local” contingent were just not good enough to propel an undermanned roster past a highly beatable Hawks outfit.
Maor must take that one on the chin.
He is an outstanding recruiter of imported talent. So far he’s batting 1000 if you consider last season’s outstanding trio of Jarrell Brantley, Barry Brown Jr and Dererk Pardon – considered the best collection of restricted players the club has ever had.
And this year’s group of JacksonCartwright, Cheatham and Lamb (who replaced Justinian Jessup very early) was almost as good.
He’s also a coach his players enjoy playing for, at least those who make his pretty tight rotation. He’s a heart-onsleeve type who challenges his men, but also cuddles them when the occasion warrants.
There can be no doubt he has turned the Breakers into a combative outfit in the wake of the gruelling Covid years.
But it’s with locals where he has come up short. McDowell-White is the exception, and at his best he’s on a tier with the best homegrown talent in the league.
Clearly, his rapport with Maor has kept him in Auckland, when he had offers aplenty elsewhere.
But the Breakers have been at their best previously when they’ve had a core group of effective Kiwi performers. Maor last season had Le’afa, a declining Abercrombie, a hobbled Delany and Dan Fotu as his, on top of veteran Aussie Cam Gliddon.
Le’afa is a fine defender, but a streaky shooter (he went 35% from the floor and 33 from deep in ‘23-24), Delany was blighted by injury in his return from Germany, Abercrombie was simply past his best, Gliddon too, and Fotu, the premier young Kiwi prospect when he arrived, never developed into a player Maor trusted.
With McDowell-White and Delany the only players in his main rotation still under contract (the limited and sparingly used Dane Pineau is also on the books), Maor has some work to do with his roster for 24-25.
He will, of course, press hard to keep Jackson-Cartwright, but it will be exceedingly difficult, for reasons well documented.
So top of his list must be local talent he can mould, improve and, most importantly, rely on.
It’s the missing piece in an otherwise outstanding body of work from the Breakers mentor.