NZ Breakers 96-84 Sydney Kings

Once again, home court has been defended and the question is seriously starting to be asked: Are the Breakers championship favourites?

But really, are they? They haven’t lost a home game and, aside from the Webster-less beginnings, have consistently challenged on Aussie soil too. Melbourne United had a faux-Golden State start winning their first nine games but since then have dropped five of seven and conceded first place to Perth with Jermaine Beal’s banger of a 40-point game the other day. You can look at the Illawarra Hawks as a decent competitor, and Adelaide have had their moments, but the Breakers and the Wildcats are once again the two teams to beat. And the Breaks have the season tiebreaker which could be crucial with home court advantage should they meet in the playoffs.

As it stands, the Breakers are at 10-5 with the top two, Perth and Melly, at 11-5. Win that game in hand and away we go.

But it took a massive second half to see off the cellar-dwelling Kings. You have to feel sorry for the Kings and the injuries that Josh Childress has suffered, but then you can’t go putting all your eggs in one basket and even with Al Harrington doing (sporadic) things they still weren’t much good. Childress is busted once more and in his place comes NBA champion… Damian James. Yeah, not a huge name but that’s still a fair pedigree having played five times for the San Antonio Spurs in 2013-14. That’s five more than most, I s’pose.

James flew in to Sydney from Houston on Weds/Thurs and then was straight off to Auckland to play on Friday night. That’s a brutal amount of travel. Still, he shrugged it off to play a solid enough 23 mins under the circumstances. He only shot 3 of 12, but whatever. It was Julian Khazzouh that did the early damage. He scored nine in the first as the Kings shot out to a 21-14 lead with much of that work done inside and Catfish paid the price with early foul trouble. The Breakers tried to shoot their way back into it, only for Corey Webster to have an uncharacteristic off night with his jump shot. Usually he gets hot for at least a few shots. Between he and Cedric, there were more bricks than a lego set in the first half. Sydney up 45-37.

Shout out to Coach Vickerman though. He gets criticism sometimes unfairly and he gets praise sometimes unfairly but it was his half time speech that fired the lads up. The defence in the first two quarters was pretty pathetic, just lazy stuff, and that was costing them at the other end as they failed to get any rhythm in transition, too often facing a defence already set in their approach.

In the second half, however, we saw them get back to the rebounding team they usually are and we saw them forcing Sydney into tough shots. That paid off and by the end of things the Kings had shot a mere 35% from the field. The Breakers overturned that deficit to take the lead a little over hallway into the quarter thanks to a Mika Vukona jumper.

Mika, what can you say? When you need a leader on defence, he’s your man. A fantastic night for him. He hit all six of his FGs for 18 points with 11 rebounds to boot. Oh, and Cedric’s second half in a word: sublime. In the end a game that was in serious doubt in the first half ended as a walkover. The Kings’ last chance was that we’d let it slip from the free throw line and even that didn’t happen. 23 of 34 as a team isn’t quite outstanding, sure. For this team it’s more than acceptable though. Cedric was 10 of 14. Vukona 6 of 7.

Mika’s 18 led the scoring, incredibly. Cedric was close behind with 17p/9a/7r, while Webster and Catfish had 12 each and there was 11 for Tommy and Tai (Wesley, that is, since Wynyard got 80 secs or so at the end). Tom also added 8 boards and 4 blocked shots, nailing a late three to pretty much kill it with under 2 mins left.

Marcus Thornton scored 17 and played some great defence for the Kings. Also, Jason Cadee scored 19 and Khazzouh 15.

Stocks:

Movin’ On Up Like Curtis Mayfield – Mika Vukona is a hero. He is a club legend and a leader and a man to ceaselessly admire. He is the Manu Vatuvei of the Breakers. Some may even say the Richie McCaw. To see him have a game like this is always a treat, especially in a season where points have been few and far between for him and his once automatic health hasn’t always held up.

Goin’ Down Slow Like Howlin’ Wolf – Corey Webster scored only 12 points, losing his lead as league top scorer to ADL’s Jerome Randle. He shot 5 of 20 in what was clearly a dud game for him. He’s a volume shooter so he’ll have these games. The beauty of Webster is that he won’t stop shooting just because he missed his last couple, he’ll keep on plugging away and he isn’t intimidated by the stat lines in the way that, oh, Chris Goulding for example seems to be. CG will have these 12 point kinda games every couple weeks and it’ll be because he only shoots like 6-8 times. You’re the best shooter on the team, you need to be stepping up buddy. Webster never has that problem. The only reason Webby ain’t staring at the MVP award as it stands is because of his own teammate, a certain Cedric Jackson and his nightly triple-double threat.

Awesome performance tonight by Mika Vukona who has passed 2500 career points, with 18 points tonight! #breakernation #togetherstronger

A photo posted by SKYCITY Breakers NZ (@skycitybreakers) on Dec 11, 2015 at 12:33am PST

Key Stat

Corey Webster broke a Breakers training session shooting record the other day. It didn’t last long:

New Skycity Breakers shooting record: Tom Abercrombie - 80 makes - 5 mins - 1 ball - 1 rebounder. #Chur
— Dean Vickerman (@DeanVickerman) December 7, 2015