The NBL Blitz starts this weekend, a first chance to have a glimpse at what the 2021-22 Breakers are gonna look like. The whole crew is over in Oz now all united and raring to go. Should be pretty interesting. The whole crew, that is, except for the newest and presumably final addition: Princepal Singh.

Princepal Singh is a 20 year old Indian prospect and he’s signed on a three-year deal with the first two being as a development player and the third a team option for full roster status. Singh was formerly a part of the NBL’s NextGen camp and has played some NBL1 in the past so there’s an existing Australian link. He stands at 2.06m (6’9), a power forward whom Matt Walsh claims is India’s best ever basketballing prospect.

Now, as a Dallas Mavericks fan, I may counter that suggestion with the name Satnam Singh but be that as it may. Satnam Singh never went anywhere – spent two years in the G-League and then became a pro wrestler. Sim Bhullar did play NBA though he was born in Canada (to Indian immigrant parents). It’s not a particularly long list to be fair, basketball is an emerging sport at best in India. But that’s all a sidenote.

Does this Princepal Singh/Breakers signing sound familiar to you? Because it should... this is basically exactly the same thing that they did with Terry Li, the Chinese prospect who was picked up on the exact same length of contract two years ago. Terry Li who, in his first season, chucked up these impressive numbers...

I’ll admit asking for much from DPs in year one is a bit harsh but that’s all we’ve got to go on because he left after one year in a departure that was never even properly announced by the club. He just... wasn’t there any more. It’s very in keeping with the Breakers media strategy to bury anything even remotely negative so that probably explains that: they didn’t wanna admit the experiment failed. However here we are one year later, coming into what woulda been the last year of Li’s contract, and they’re signing a fella with a similar pedigree from the next most populous nation on the planet for the same reasons.

Speaking of Terry Li...

Yes, by all means, let’s brag about the exploits of a player who barely played for the team and left one year into a three year deal. Sure. Go right ahead and do that.

The Breakers are all in on this being a club where prospects can launch themselves into the NBA and that’s how you have to view Princepal Singh’s addition. It doesn’t make sense to use DP spots on international players otherwise because once they’re no longer DPs they become imports, using up those precious few placements – imports are expected to be your best players so unless you can develop a foreign DP to that extent then it’s a waste of time. Even if you do then they’ll surely leave for bigger opportunities (and if they’re already at that level then they’re surely not accepting DP contracts in Australia). Granted, the Breakers are already currently using an international spot on a prospect player in Hugo Besson so you can’t completely put it past them.

The thing is, there’s not a whole lot of evidence yet that it works. Terry Li’s obviously not playing NBA. At 21 years old he’s still early in his career but do you really reckon he’s getting picked up next year when he’s draft eligible? Doubtful. The NBA has a long history of underestimating foreign prospects when it comes to the draft, as good as Trae Young is (and DeAndre Ayton’s a quality player too... though let’s not discuss Marvin Bagley III at second overall right now), it’s pretty hard to fathom how else Luka Doncic slipped to third in 2018. He was already dominating the EuroLeague as a teenager. As pro ready as any top draft prospect has ever been.

Or how about this angle: the last two MVPs were Giannis Antetokounmpo (drafted 15th overall in 2015) and Nikola Jokic (drafted 41st overall in 2015). It’s a trend. The international stuff is growing but the draft is built around college scouting and teams are often weirdly risk-averse in an environment where the top picks are literally decided by a lottery.

The prime examples of the Next Star push are LaMelo Ball and (to a lesser extent) RJ Hampton... but both were gonna be drafted highly no matter where they played the year before. In fact there’s a very reasonable case to be made that cruising into the NBL actually hurt their draft stock. Ball should really have gone first (no shade on Anthony Edwards though, he’s playing great right now) while there’s no way Hampton’s happy with sliding all the way to 24 overall. Especially when, based on reports, he didn’t exactly enjoy his time in Aotearoa. Never did get that insider doco he was supposedly producing, did we?

Curious then to see that the Breakers have pivoted away from American prospects and towards international dudes. The American kids are better served going to American colleges... but the international dudes are gonna be underrated either way. Maybe, just maybe, this is not the golden road it’s made out to be? Unless you’re Josh Giddey... but he’s an Aussie so that’s a different scenario. It wasn’t a one year thing with him, his entire development came through the Australian ranks.

Princepal Singh had been drafted into the G-League for the upcoming season (61st overall) but has opted out of that to play for the Breakers. ‘Play’ being a theoretical word because these are the minutes totals offered to Development Players under Dan Shamir in his two seasons...

• Terry Li – 3.1 mins (3 games)

• Taine Murray – 2.8 mins (1 game)

• Isaac Davidson – 17.2 mins (11 games)

(To be fair, Davidson has since been upgraded to a full contract so make of that what you will).

((Edit: Yeah, yeah… I forgot about Kyrin Galloway who was technically a DP last season. Though that was more clever roster finagling than anything, Galloway on a 3yr deal with the second two fully contracted - don’t think there was even a team option there, it was a guaranteed thing. A DP in name only as while his minutes fluctuated with form and match-ups he was a rotation guy from day one. But yes technically speaking he should probably count too))

Singh will be able to relate to that given he’s already been deep in the grind. It’s mentioned in most of the write-ups about how he became the first Indian player to win an NBA title of any description with the Sacramento Kings Summer League team recently. Less acknowledged are the 5.5 total minutes he played in that tournament (2 points, 1 rebound, 2 personal fouls). And though he played G-League last season he only appeared in four games for a combined 24.9 mins (shot 1/1 from three point range though, that’s enticing).

Terry Li joined the Breakers in the wake of the RJ Hampton deal with all the hype that was swirling around. Of course that was a major factor for him. Now the Breakers are going hard on Ousmane Dieng and Hugo Besson and Princepal Singh is also along for the ride... doubt it’s a coincidence from Singh’s point of view. If it’s good enough for them then it’s good enough for him and if he can sneak on for some garbage time assists with the scouts watching then sweet as.

Terry Li also arrived at a time when the Breakers were quite firmly moving away from a model of developing kiwi players with their DP spots – Li was the only Development Player that season. The following year, with no Next Stars amidst the covid yarns, Taine Murray and Isaac Davidson were brought in as a welcome return to that domestic approach (even if they didn’t get nearly enough minutes as they should have for a team that went 12-24). Murray’s off to college now while Davidson’s been upgraded. In their place, Sam Timmins was snapped up. Kiwi big man whose scope for minutes is a little better than Murray/Davidson last season given the team’s shallowed depth in the frontcourt. Now Princepal Singh is joining him in the DP club. Sorta splitting the difference there.

The other thing to know here is that the Princepal Singh news was broken by Marc Stein, prominent NBA journalist. Not by any NZ/Aus journos who were right there on hand but by a major American personality... which lets you know which audience they’re targeting here. Stein tweeted about the Singh thing at 1.14pm NZT on Wednesday, twenty mins before the Breakers own account revealed the deal and half an hour before the NBL got amongst it.

Stein’s on Substack now, by the way. Hence the generic self-promoting link. He used to work for ESPN and the New York Times but Substack have been pretty hard-handed about acquiring writers to work on their platform. Apparently they pay the top dudes pretty handily (on top of whatever they make from subscriptions). Fair enough, do what ya gotta do. The Niche Cache’s own Substack is free and we don’t get paid for it because we’re not shills but sign up to it anyway for some bonus yarns every Monday and Friday as well as all the relevant article/podcast links.

But it was Marc Stein for a reason. That reason being that Matt Walsh obviously has the dude’s number saved because Stein has tweeted unusually often about the NZ Breakers over the last few years. Back in 2019, Steiny ‘reported’ that the Breakers were going hard at getting Joachim Noah in as an import (Matt Walsh played with Noah in college). The previous year it was about how the Breakers wanted Rick Pitino as their new coach. Which is absolutely drop-dead hilarious in hindsight because of course they ended up with self-proclaimed Pitino acolyte in Dan Shamir instead... except it turned out that Shamir never actually “spent a year shadowing Rick Pitino at the University of Kentucky to kick-start his own education”. This from a 2019 The Athletic article about RJ Hampton’s emo phase in Aotearoa...

Biiiiit of a miscommunication in there somewhere. Although it may have been local media latching onto an idea rather than Shamir intentionally leading them astray, dunno. Anyway, Marc Stein’s greatest Breakers scoop was surely when he offered to the masses that picture of Matt Walsh golfing with Barack Obama...

Also y’all are aware of this, right? How the Miami Heat’s 2018 Sunset Vice jerseys are basically identical to the Breakers new home jerseys, give or take a little extra trimming, advertisers, and fonts? The Breakers whose colour scheme has always revolved around blue and black until very recently when hot pink came into style or something. Not sure there’s anything necessarily wrong here but it’s pretty much copying the Heat’s homework. Hell, they’ve even got team swag with palm trees on them. You know, those famous Miami symbols which don’t have anything to do with Aotearoa. In other news, guess which NBA franchise Matt Walsh played for…

Hopefully Princepal Singh is really good and he develops to be even better with the Breakers but to be honest this signing looks to be a little more about this concept the Breakers are trying to project of themselves being this hub for launching prospects into the NBA Draft. Singh won’t count against the overall roster, being a DP and all, so he’s a no-risk addition to the group. It’s more about whether he’s a meaningful addition in any way. If the Breakers actually can launch him into the NBA then absolutely, what a move. It’s just that recent history suggests that’s rather unlikely. Happy to be proven wrong though.

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