Former Boomers and NBL great Sam McKinnon has dished out a withering assessment of the New Zealand Breakers’ championship credentials. “They’ve favourites,” he declared after his Brisbane Bullets had just been put to the sword by Mody Maor’s soaring side at Spark Arena on Sunday.
McKinnon was serving as interim head coach for an undermanned Bullets side that had no answer to the all-round game of the Breakers as they surged to a 116-79 Australian NBL victory that improved them to 10-3 for the season, was their fourth on the bounce, and seventh in the last eight, as they continue to elevate their play through a tough schedule.
There is a respite of sorts this week as the peripatetic Breakers are not required to cross the Tasman, hosting the dangerous South East Melbourne Phoenix in Christchurch on Thursday night, before following up back at Spark Arena on Saturday evening against heated rivals the Perth Wildcats. It’s a nice little measuring stick for a side that has become the talk of this competition.
And McKinnon, who stepped into the breach at the Bullets after head coach James Duncan was fired on Friday, made it clear that right now everybody in the league, including the 8-2 defending champion Sydney Kings, are chasing the standard being set by Maor’s men who have made light of a gruelling menu of testing trans-Tasman doubles.
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“They just have everything,” McKinnon told Stuff after a game in which the Kiwi club posted the highest score and biggest winning margin of the season. “They’re big and strong, and the stress and anxiety comes in when [Jarrell] Brantley is going to work in the post or [Dererk] Pardon – and they shot the lights out of it. They’ve got weapons everywhere … perimeter threats, post threats. They’ve got the makings of a really good team.”
And McKinnon, a triple Olympian with the Boomers, was not buying a theory that Maor’s men had flown under the radar through the first half of this season on the back of those two brutal campaigns over the Covid peak played out almost entirely on the road.
“Not for me, they weren’t,” he said. “I do the recruiting and I know what they got. I was feeling sorry for them last year, but I’m not feeling sorry for them now. They recruited really well … those imports, Will McDowell-White and [Izaya] Le’afa, I may have tried to see what they were doing in the off-season.
“I haven’t doubted them. I heard them say they’re the underdogs. They’re the favourites, in my opinion.”
The Kings, and their proven offence-minded lineup, might beg to differ, but the Breakers appear to have found a nice rhythm, based on their league-best defence and a balanced rotation with firepower throughout. Against the Bullets on Sunday they shot a sizzling 60% from the floor and 52 from beyond the arc as they rode home on Brantley’s 29 points, 21 (all in the first half) from Izayah Le’afa, 17 from Barry Brown Jr and 16 from Dererk Pardon.
There were good signs, too, that Tom Abercrombie and Cam Gliddon – important pieces as this thing plays out – were catching some form as they knocked down a combined five triples. They are also playing without two key pieces in French Next Star Rayan Rupert and backup big Rob Loe.
But Maor has set the bar high for this group, and managed to find something to be critical of in the wake of a comprehensive victory over a Bullets side down its two best big men and an import.
“We need to learn how to be great when we win,” he said. “I did not like that second quarter (won 35-26). We gave up 47 points in the first half – that is not our team, this is not how we play, and I don’t care what the score is.
“I’m very proud of how the guys responded. It shows me they understand who we are and who we need to be. It doesn’t matter who was on the floor in the second half, we defended. So with that I’m happy.”
As far as being 10-3, and the talk of the league, it is fair to say the Israeli coach has not found himself in any comfort zone.
“There’s no comfort,” he surmised. “This is a young group and a new group, and if we want to achieve good things and maximise our potential, then there are challenges in losing, which will 100% come, and there are challenges in winning. I’m focused on the challenge now, making sure we understand what we want to achieve, and that we’re not there yet.
“We need to keep getting better and find the motivation from within. It’s not a chip on our shoulders because people don’t think we’re good … these are the challenges that winning brings, and that’s what I’m focused on.”
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