Edgar Sosa & DJ Newbill Have Turned The Breakers Into NBL Frontrunners
By the time the clock ran out in Perth on Sunday night, the arguments were over. If you didn’t think the Breakers were the best in show before this weekend then doing the double on a home-away versus the Perth Wildcats, defending champs, had to have sealed the deal. That doesn’t mean they’ll Golden State Warriors their way to the title yet because there’s a long way to go. But with a third of the season in the books the Breaks are nursing an eight-game winning streak and looking down on all challengers.
Weirdly, they’ve done it without a player in the top ten scorer’s list. Kirk Penney is hitting an insane 56% from deep but he’s the only Breaker in the top 15 for 3pt% (Tommy’s 16th at a sweet 41%). Mika Vukona and Alex Pledger are hauling in the rebounds which helps but that’s about the only stat category that anyone stands out in.
That’s the thing with these Breakers though, they’re winning these games on the back of pure team efforts. Kirk Penney missed a few games and they kept winning. Tom Abercrombie has a down game? No worries, someone else steps up and then Tommy’s got their back the next game. What’s more is this team is playing some lockdown defence, giving up the third fewest points per game (81.8 PPG) and keeping opposition shooters to just 32.7% from outside. That last bit is crazy because last year they had one of the worst opponent 3PT averages (although they hauled it back towards the end into the mid-table at 36.1% as they finally got some consistency from their guards after all them injuries – Run DMC!).
The Breakers don’t score many points, only the Cairns Taipans are averaging fewer, but they score enough to win close games. Like, Shea Ili was having a stink one in Perth until the last two minutes when he absolutely flipped the script. Clutch buckets, mate. The Breakers are full of them. And they’d score more points if they could make their bloody free throws too – lingering at an NBL-bottom 63.2% there. Main culprits: Rob Loe is 5/12, Finn Delany 3/11 and, surprisingly, Mika Vukona is 3/17 – what!? Shea Ili could be doing a little better than his 65.9% but he’s doing enough for now given how flippin’ easy he’s getting to the line.
Shea Ili’s rise already got its own exploration though, this one is about the two new imports. Every NBL team is gonna be built on its imports, they’re the X-Factors. A few Kirk Penney’s always help and you can’t do it without them either but the best players in the league tend to be the foreign lads brought in to make the difference. Hence why those pre-season things about the Breakers potentially going to struggle were stupid – nobody knew how they were gonna go until they saw Eddie Sosa and DJ Newbill in action and nothing about their pedigrees suggested they’d be mugs. Also those predictions were stupid because who the hell is discounting a team with multiple championship winners in the first place? Eedjits.
The best compliment that can be given to the Breakers’ scouting team now is that Sosa and Newbill are exactly as advertised. Sosa is an energetic, playmaking point guard in the proper sense, one who can shoot but just as often facilitates for others. Newbill is a gunner and a tough bugger who can defend multiple positions and score in a few different ways. Both are great culture guys.
There’s no hype-ups here. They’re each exactly what they were supposed to be and all those things mentioned earlier about how the Breakers are thriving, those are the things that Sosa and Newbill are bringing to the table.
Edgar Sosa: 14.1 PTS | 39.6% FG | 35.2% 3PT | 82.3% FT | 1.7 REB | 4.0 AST
DJ Newbill: 14.6 PTS | 46.6% FG | 34.4% 3PT | 72.7% FT | 4.7 REB | 2.6 AST
Neither’s anything special from deep but they’re pretty handy and when Penney, Abercrombie and even Ili are drilling the deep ones at the same or a better rate then points will follow. By the way, Sosa’s triple numbers are better than they look since he runs red hot and ice cold from range (he’s had a five-tres game and two 1/7s already). Eddie & DJ are the two best free throw shooters in the team plus both have shown they know how to get to the rim, Newbill especially. They’re also, along with Shea Ili, the main perimeter defenders so if there’s been a massive improvement on defence there this season then that’s why – two new and superior defenders.
Sosa’s erratic shooting means he’s had a 24-point game in which he made five triples (vs Adelaide) but he’s also had a 3-point game in which he shot 1/6 from the field (vs Sydney). That latter was the first game in which Shea Ili really dominated and Sosa only played 21 minutes. Maybe he was sick or carrying a slight injury or something (those things happen and we never realise, you know). What he has done all the while, however, is all that other stuff. He’s had at least 5 assists in five different games already and the game in Perth broke a six-game streak with a steal in every one.
Newbill has also been known to dish the dimes on occasions (6 vs Perth in AKL and 5 vs Adelaide), while he’s also had three 7-rebound games. Equally as impressive as everything else that he’s done is that he’s scored in double-figures in every single game this season, highlights being his 22-point game in that Sydney clash when Sosa had his worst night and the 20-pointer in Perth the other night, also on one of Sosa’s cold ones. If Eddie is the lead guitarist, going off on wild solos, then DJ is the rhythm guitarist who just keeps on laying it dooown.
Oh and DJ Newbill once did this:
Oh and Edgar Sosa once did this:
That right there is the business and that right there is how the Breakers have managed to win eight games in a row. Neither quite brings the Cedric Jackson heroics of old but that ain’t really how this team plays anymore. The Breakers were fortunate to have as much Cedric as they got, many imports are only around for that one golden season – last year the Breakers even had to replace a couple. It’s gotta be a strange life, that of the travelling basketball player. But this is what they live for.
Hey and if you don’t wanna get swept up in the here and now and soon forgotten nature of all that, check out this piece from the New York Times about Edgar Sosa and the compound fracture he suffered to his leg six years ago.
“In 2011, while he and Horford were playing for the Dominican Republic in an Olympic qualifier in Argentina, Sosa crashed under the basket and, in clinical terms, sustained compound — or open — fractures of his right tibia and fibula. Simply put, the two bones in his lower leg cracked and tore through his skin.”
Every player has a story.
MVP Points in Perth
3 – DJ Newbill
2 – Alex Pledger
1 – Kirk Penney
MVP Points vs Perth
3 – DJ Newbill
2 – Kirk Penney
1 – Alex Pledger/Shea Ili
2017-18 MVP Standings
12 - DJ Newbill & Edgar Sosa
8 – Tom Abercrombie & Kirk Penney
6 – Shea Ili
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