Reflecting on the End of the Breakers Season
2.9 seconds left in overtime, Melbourne United with the inbounds pass. Josh Boone makes a sharp circling cut inside, leaving Rob Loe stumbling in his dust, and Casper Ware feeds him with a flash of a pass. Up goes Boone for the winner but up goes Tom Abercrombie as well, who’d dropped off Tai Wesley when he saw the danger brewing. Boone lays it up but Abercrombie heroically denies him, slapping the ball off the backboard. Abercrombie lands down and looks up for the loose ball as the clock ticks into its final second. He can’t find it. Boone can. His long arm reaches back to grasp the rebound and he flips it back up without losing a beat. It rolls off the rim and in as the clock expires. This is the way that a season ends.
Having dropped the first game in Melbourne, this was a must-win for the Breakers. As things happened the matchup they most wanted in the semis was the one against the top team but this is not the brittle United team that they knocked out in similar circumstances two seasons ago. This is a team with multiple threats, a team that knows how to win a close game. It was never gonna be easy.
Ware was the difference in the first game as he scored 33 points, granted he shot 13/29 to get there. As remarkable was Ware was at times in that game, you also can’t really blame it on a dude that shot less than 50%. Chris Goulding was only 3/12 from the field as well while Josh Boone had just six shot attempts. Casey Prather and Tai Wesley had good games but the Breakers have probably gotta look inwards there. The Melbourne defence is superb and they gave fits to the likes of Rob Loe (0/6) and Tom Abercrombie (2/7). Edgar Sosa only scored 10 points.
Instead it was Shea Ili, who played fantastically on the way to 16 points, and DJ Newbill with a team-high 19 points that led the way but as far as clutch shots go, it was all Melbourne. Ware and Goulding weren’t untouchable over the 40 minutes but when it mattered they made it count. Plus this Breakers team needs to be rebounding. Splitting the boards isn’t good enough for them, that’s not how they’re built to compete. Chuck in 15 turnovers and that’s enough to lose you a close playoff game.
Coming out in Auckland it was a different story. Some high-court pressure leading to turnovers immediately set the tone for a more desperate and energetic Breakers performance. The first eight points of the game all came down the same end and soon enough it was 16-4. The lead peaked at 28-15 early in the second. Odd thing was the Breakers weren’t even shooting that well, leaving some regrettable points out there with missed layups and such. They were much better on Ware, yet this time Boone stepped it up. With his strength and athleticism at the five there was not a Breaker out there who could control him and thus the foul counts rose.
By the early third the visitors were right back into it. A Chris Goulding three gave them their first lead of the night but the Breaks had a couple secret weapons up their sleeve. DJ Newbill was one, he scored 14 points in the third with a barrage of shooting while Rob Loe, having been blanked a couple nights earlier, was perfect on this one. 6/6 for 16 points, making four triples. If it weren’t for fouls then he’d have played a bunch more too.
Then there was the retiree: old mate Kirk Penney. He may be hanging them up but he wasn’t settling for a house in Florida this soon – making a trio of threes on his way to 17 points. He was great, displaying the scoring punch off the bench that this team missed over the last month or so of the regular season. He made some tough shots and the Breakers had the chance to win it at the end of the fourth despite trailing most of the way down the stretch. Edgar Sosa, again struggling to have the impact he had against this team earlier in the season, got up a three on the last possession which he missed but rebounded. He tried to throw it back up in traffic and it ended up with DJ Newbill. Time expired.
By this time the lads had to be pretty exhausted and with foul trouble piling up for several of their best defenders (Mika Vukona fouled out, Sosa and Loe had four each) they gave up three straight buckets in OT and were playing catchup from there, which is when Rob Loe stepped it up with a couple three pointers to tie us up again. And then you know what happened next: Josh Boone.
The margins are really that slim. And Melbourne United, playing like this, were too good for the Breakers to beat without hitting their absolute maximum with a little luck thrown in as well. They played impressively in both games and the second was an NBL classic. There’s no shame whatsoever in doing all you can and still coming up short against a better team.
They got big contributions from their role players too. Rob Loe was huge in the second game while Kirk Penney scored 26 points on 10/13 shooting across the two. Rakeem Christmas had some big moments and Shea Ili was huge over in Melbourne. However Tom Abercrombie shot a woeful 2/16 for the series, including missing all nine in the second, for only five points all up. Not good enough, to be honest. Edgar Sosa too, who scored 10 points and then 12 points but probably needed to double that given his status on this team as their best scorer. Unfortunately that rivalry with Casper Ware kinda went the wrong way in the end. Hey, maybe he’ll be back next year, you never know. Got to give huge credit to the way Dean Vickerman’s side slowed him down though.
Ideally this article woulda been previewing a massive game three with a place in the finals on the line but instead the season’s over for the New Zealand Breakers. They’ll be back better next season, although the times are a-changing. The new ownership team is likely to take a bigger role in the team’s public profile (which is all good, btw – gotta sell it and the NBL has heaps of room for that stuff) and there’ll be at least one familiar face who won’t be back.
You may want to argue with this claim but Kirk Penney was Aotearoa’s finest basketballer ever until Steven Adams came along. In any case he’s a bloody legend. And this farewell, including coach Paul Henare and Melbourne’s kiwi resident Tohi Smith-Milner, was a fitting one for one of the greats as he now embarks on life beyond basketball.
Goosebumps, man.
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