Webster back to boost Breakers
Corey Webster’s timely return will help, but the Breakers will also be seeking to ramp up the productivity of imports Lamar Patterson and Colton Iverson for tonight’s Australian NBL rematch against the Adelaide 36ers.
If the 0-1 Breakers are to shake off the disappointment of their season-opening 94-91 overtime defeat to the 2-2 Sixers first up, they are going to need more significant outputs from their two restricted players.
On top of what they should get from Webster, whose cut hand has finally healed enough to allow him to return to action, it would provide the fillip the out-of-sorts Breakers need to get their campaign back on track.
In Iverson’s case, that should not be difficult after the experienced 2.13m American failed to make a bucket in just 10 minutes on court in an inauspicious NBL debut.
The most alarming aspect of a concerning statline (1 point, 6 rebounds and 3 quick fouls in just 10 minutes on court) was a -19 plus/minus. The score went south big time when he was on the floor.
The 31-year-old Iverson, is better than that. Way better.
Breakers coach Dan Shamir has been round too long to judge anyone on one game in an unfamiliar environment, but expects a response from the big American.
‘‘This was his first game, and though the minus-19 is number that jumps out of the statsheet, he needs a little more time to move faster and get into a rhythm. Hopefully
it won’t take Shamir told Stuff.
Patterson was also way short of the standard expected. The twotime all-NBL selection looked out of shape and, not surprisingly, out of sync with his new team-mates after a late arrival in Australia. He finished with 16 points on 6-of-16 shooting and 6 rebounds, but had 7 turnovers, including a couple at the end of regulation.
The talented swingman looks like he might need a week or two to work back into the shape to be the team’s primary offensive weapon, but Shamir is confident he will get there.
Still, Webster’s medical clearance could not be more opportune. His younger brother, Tai, was the prime scoring threat last Friday but the 31 shots he took to accumulate a game-high 34 points was not the balance the team is looking for from its star point guard.
Corey’s return will provide a valuable scoring thrust for the Breakers, with the veteran Tall Black likely to be used in a bench role, at least initially.
‘‘I’m ready to go, man,’’ said Webster from Adelaide after the accident while cutting an avocado put a spanner in the works of his pre-season.
Webster said he did not anticipate any need for minutes restrictions either.
Corey averaged 19.5 points a game in 11 outings for the Breakers last season before being granted a mid-season release to play in Italy.
Tonight’s game in Adelaide will be the first time the Webster brothers have taken the court together since the Fiba World Cup in China two years ago. too long,’’
Surely the Australian government has a duty to impose another hard lockdown and to quarantine all whingeing tennis players for a further 14 days. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews could also instruct Australia’s Department for Correctional Services to confiscate all phones and laptops so that players can’t keep spreading ‘Twitter Narcissus 21’, a highly contagious virus whose origins have been linked to moaning, overprivileged sports stars.
Indeed, maybe it is time to lock down the entire Australian Open so that wealthy tennis players can’t keep tweeting ‘poor me’. The following is just a flavour of what some of these professional tennis players and their glossy acolytes have said after being forced into quarantine for a fortnight following positive Covid tests on their flights.
The Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut said quarantine was ‘‘like being in jail’’. When the interviewer asked if it truly was like being in prison, Bautista Agut said: ‘‘It’s the same – with Wi-fi. The government has no idea about tennis, practice courts, no idea about anything.’’
Hmm, what a wacky sense of proportion the world No 13 has. Maybe he hasn’t heard of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader to Putin, who was poisoned with a nerve agent and then thrown in jail when he tried to enter his home country. His wife, Yulia, subsequently joined thousands of protestors. They were then also thrown in jail.
The truly incarcerated Yulia posted an instagram image of herself on Saturday and apologised ‘‘for the poor quality. Very bad light in the paddy wagon’’. She didn’t mention that the temperature was -45degC. Doubtless Agut’s travails in a warm hotel room have been far more agonising, in conditions which caused one fellow competitor to complain of suffocating because she couldn’t open her window. They have our sympathy.
Alize Cornet, another tortured player, wrote: ‘‘Weeks and weeks of practice and hard work going to waste for one person positive to COVID in a 3/4 empty plane. Sorry but this is insane.’’
Vanessa Sierra, quarantined with her tennis player boyfriend Bernard Tomic, lamented her follicles on social media; ‘‘This is the worst part of quarantine. I don’t wash my own hair. I’ve never washed my own hair. It’s just not something that I do. I normally have hairdressers that do it twice a week for me.’’
At least Cornet had the grace to apologise. Bautista Agut said he had been taken out of context, the usual feeble excuse of someone too important to say sorry, and Sierra said that we couldn’t take a joke. It is sometimes hard to laugh when you have been locked down as often as the people of Melbourne.
Australian comedian Marcus Ryan wrote; ‘‘I’ve lost my career. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. Economies and industries have collapsed. The world is in turmoil. You have millions, you have your health. Shut up and eat the food for 14 days or take a year off you ungrateful **** . Nobody cares.’’
I am not so sure of that. We should not entirely blame these young men and women. A large part of the problem is that they have had too much care in their young lives. They have lived their professional lives in an unreal world where every day they are made to feel a million