Don’t Look Now But Maybe, Just Maybe, The Breakers Are Starting To Turn Things Around
Credit where credit is due because the Breakers have done a lot of nice things in the weeks since Mody Maor took over as head coach. Logical, respectable roster building things. The dude immediately began talking about re-establishing a kiwi core to the playing group and lo and behold it’s actually happening. New signings like Tom Vodanovich, Dan Fotu, and Izayah Mauriohooho-Le’afa to go with existing locals Rob Loe, Tom Abercrombie, and Sam Timmins... there’s a lot to like there.
This isn’t just lip service. During this current era the Breakers have always been decent at saying the right things but they’ve tended not to back those words up. Sure, we were told that Dan Shamir was this genius level basketball mind... and maybe he is but his coaching record left a lot to be desired even after you account for the pandemicry. We were also told that Lamar Patterson was “the best small forward in the NBL” when he signed and that didn’t exactly turn out to be true. Not to mention all the lovely things we were told about how their wholesome culture was exactly what Glenn Rice Jr needed to stay out of trouble. There was the NBA-style matchday experience that wasn’t. RJ Hampton being a top five prospect in his draft class. So on and so forth.
But Mody Maor has made a point about wanting this roster to reflect its home country and the signings that the franchise has made since he was promoted to the top job have backed that up. There’s even a bit more balance to the roster than has been the case recently, especially the last two years where every second player seemed to be a ball-dominant guard. These are good things. This is progress for an embattled club. Naturally the emphasis of the rebuilt kiwi core comes with a tacit admittance that they never should have gone away from that path in the first place... but hey we live and we learn. Better to admit that now than never at all.
Good actions are better than good words. Good outcomes are better than both... although that much remains to be seen for the wooden-spoon-wielding Breakers. It’s been the same yarn every season about how they’ve put together a roster capable of challenging for the championship. So far they’ve yet to even make the playoffs in four seasons of the Matt Walsh era.
We’ll see how it goes because while Mody has impressed so far since being promoted, he hasn’t actually, you know, coached a game of basketball yet (except as a covid interim which doesn’t count). Whether he can succeed on the court is another story - after all his appointment was an unsurprising yet concerning dose of continuity from the failed tenure of Dan Shamir. Not that we got a perfect line on Shamir as coach either due to the pandemic. In that aspect it’s a shame he left when he did... though perfectly understandable given the family reasons behind his decision.
Given this newly discovered predilection for signing Aotearoa ballers, we’ll hopefully get a tasty development player unit as well. There have been recent seasons where the Breakers just straight up didn’t bother with development players (other than club legends Terry Li and Princepal Singh) but guys like Sam Timmins and Isaac Davidson have helped turn that trend around lately and we all know there’s no shortage of killer young kiwi players worthy of those nods.
Other than that we’re six and out with the NZers because with Will McDowell-White returning of his own volition – the only player from last year’s roster who specifically chose to come back (everyone else was already under contract or in the case of Sam Timmins had a team option) – and Cam Gliddon gliding across the Tasman Sea to offer some much needed leadership and three-point shooting to the crew... that’s their allotment of local players all locked in. Eight blokes plus three imports and the apparently obligatory Next Star plus hopefully some DPs. That’s the extent of it.
The Breakers have already scooped up their first import. 25 year old American wing Dererk Pardon was signed up nice and early. Maor referred to him as the team’s number one target and talked up his pick and roll potential alongside WMW and IML, as well as what he brings to the court defensively. Pardo was a four-year player for Northwestern at college and went undrafted in 2019. Since then he’s had a tidy career in Europe playing in Italy, Germany, and most recently – you’ll be shocked to hear this - Israel, with Hapoel Be’er Sheva.
Shamir may have gone but Maor’s presence ensures those Israeli connections live on. Pardon is the fifth import to have been signed by the Breakers since Shamir/Maor to have previously played in the Israeli league: Scotty Hopson, Colton Iverson, Sek Henry, and Glenn Rice Jr being the others. Plus there have been local signings with prior experience in that league too. It’s not a coincidence.
The thing with being a wooden spooner team that’s lost track of its history of success (surely we get Mika Vukona’s jersey retired and hung in the rafters now that the team is permanently back home, right?) is that recruitment isn’t always easy. If you can’t offer a winning environment then that’s one less selling point to potential recruits. And at this point it does have to be said that whilst the kiwi signings are fantastic... they didn’t exactly sign the best dudes available.
You may have noticed that Finn Delany is not amongst that completed group of locals. Finn Diesel had a down year last time, his long shot deserting him and Shamir’s tactics perhaps not facilitating his game as much as could have been the case. More than anybody else it felt like Delany was carrying the weight on his shoulders of another limbo season stuck in Oz. His contract ran up at the end of that term and he’s widely tipped to be plotting a route into Europe now – heavily rumoured to be on the verge of signing with German club Telekom Baskets Bonn. No doubt wishes he left a year earlier.
So they’ve lost him. They also lost Yanni Wetzell towards the end of the last campaign. Despite having signed a three year contract, they released him within his first season in order to allow him to take up a contract with EuroLeague club Baskonia in Spain. That experience hasn’t gone so well for Wetzell who was recently released as Baskonia opted out of the second year of his deal. Didn’t rate what he offered in the short time he was there. Across 11 games he only averaged 3.6 points and 2.9 rebounds in less than 13 mins per night. The writing was on the wall based on Spanish media reactions.
Hopefully Wetzell lands on his feet in Europe because this was the second time that he cut short an NBL deal to sign in that continent and it hasn’t worked out either time. He clearly didn’t get much of a fair shake in Baskonia and he’s far too good to have to return to the NBL with cap in hand... although if he wants to then he can basically walk into any club he wants based on his last two years of stats. Except the Breakers, unless they cut someone else first.
Tai Webster is also a free agent after leaving Žalgiris Kaunas although you’d imagine he’ll also find another home in Europe easily enough. It’d certainly be a brow-raiser if he returns to the Breakers given the circumstances in which he left. Elsewhere Sam Waardenburg was the best kiwi pro prospect coming out of the USA college system this offseason – currently back over in America doing the Summer League thing with the Dallas Mavericks – but he chose to sign with the Cairns Taipans instead. Shades of how the Breakers weren’t able to get Yanni Wetzell on board when he initially turned pro. They have at least snatched up Dan Fotu, which is a quality get.
So, yeah, lots of mint kiwi signings but maybe not signings of the highest possible calibre. But at least some of that has to come with the territory of being a bad team. The important thing is that they’re beginning to move in the right direction and in a way that should help reconnect them to fans as they return from the Australian wilderness.
It sounds like a lot of this perceived change of direction, or recalibration might be a better word, is being driven by Mody Maor. That’s great if it’s true, it means that he’s asserting himself as the new head coach and it means that he’s not gonna be tied to the previous three years of disappointment for which he was an assistant. An open mind is a good mind.
Having said that, it’s not like Dan Shamir was out there making every basketballing decision. Owner/CEO Matt Walsh takes an extremely hands-on approach to roster construction – something that, to keep it hundies, has been found lacking these past few seasons – and he’s not gone anywhere. Fingers crossed they’ve found a balance in which they can be competitive because this Breakers regime is always going to have certain quirks.
Above all it seems we can’t escape the Next Star infatuation. Even before Ousmane Dieng and Hugo Besson got themselves drafted into the NBA, the Breakers had already signed up their replacement: Rayan Rupert, another Frenchman, 18 years old as of the end of May, standing 6’7 and operating mostly as a wing player.
Once again he’s a bloke who finds himself in the first round of ESPN’s mock drafts, same as Dieng and same as RJ Hampton before him. But there’s a very important point to be made here regarding those hyped up ESPN mocks: ESPN writers don’t actually make draft selections. Those duties are left up to teams with their own specific wants and needs, who host their own specific workouts for players, and who are fully aware and emotionally invested in what they’re doing. The draft is not science, it’s performance. Vulnerable to all sorts of random whims.
It’s just such a weird infatuation. RJ Hampton had a miserable time in Aotearoa. He showed flashes of what he was capable of on the court but that Breakers team only started winning after he left. RJH then dropped to 24 in the draft, considerably lower than he was predicted at before he joined NZB, and was traded a year into his career. Granted, he has now found himself in a decent place with the Orlando Magic hence a bad draft result may have kinda helped him in the end.
Ousmane Dieng ended up going about where he was expected to go when he was scooped up by the OKC Thunder at 11. A rangy foreign wing? That’s a Thunder pick in a nutshell. They even traded up to get him... albeit the Thunder were able to risk a reach with that pick as they’d already picked second overall and also had the 12 pick in stock. Three bloody lottery picks, damn. Anyway, Dieng’s in a fine place where he’ll get time to adjust to the highest level. So long as he can hang with the outrageous collection of young talent at OKC and the competition for minutes (and even roster places) that’s bound to ensue. At least winning games won’t be the immediate priority for Dieng at the Thunder because whatever valuable lessons he may have learned at the Breakers he sure didn’t learn how to do much of that.
But Hugo Besson sunk all the way to the very bottom of the second round. He was always more of a questionable prospect. A great shooter with some silky offensive skills but poor defensively and perhaps lacking the athleticism to foot it with the best in the world. Besson did still get selected but only with the very last pick of the draft (#58) with a pick that had been traded from Phoenix to Indiana a year ago and then was flipped to Milwaukee on the Draft Day for cash considerations.
Besson is currently with the Bucks summer league team but Milwaukee’s GM has already said that they have “no intention of him being on the team this year”. Not that they don’t rate Besson, just that they don’t think he’s ready. He’s gonna be stashed overseas and funnily enough there has been considerable chat that he could end up playing for Baskonia... the very same team that just released Yanni Wetzell (and whom Matt Walsh once played for back in the day).
None of these guys have been drafted above where we were told they were bound. Some slipped more than others. The same trends are there for Next Stars at other NBL clubs too... with the exception of Josh Giddey who, as a local prospect, isn’t really in the same bag (LaMelo Ball went third but also had first overall potential). That’s fine, they’ll mostly all find (or have found) their way into the NBA one way or another. That’s ultimately all that matters. Who cares what number you’re selected? As long as there’s a team that’s willing to give you an opportunity.
Because that’s the thing: these guys were gonna get drafted regardless. The Breakers didn’t discover Ousmane Dieng. If he’d stayed in France or done a year of NCAA or whatever instead then he’d still be exactly where he is now: on the verge of the NBA. All the Breakers did was insert themselves into his backstory with the promise of a unique developmental experience – as well as presumably making some good money off the transaction because these dudes are normally signed for two years meaning that NBA teams are buying out their second year contracts to draft them. Chump change for an NBA franchise but valuable coin for an NBL team that’s barely played at their home arena for two years.
But do these fellas help the team win games of basketball? Nope, not really. Dieng showed some fantastic progress over the course of the season but still ended up with one of the worst net ratings in the league. Minus-24 for his 479 minutes according to Spatial Jam. Nobody who played more minutes was worse. Hugo Besson wasn’t much better either at -17.5 over 685 mins. His offence allowed him to stay on the court yet his defensive rating was 116.9 and that was the worst in NBL22 for anyone with 350+ mins. Needless to say RJ Hampton had a poor net rating too: -13.4 in his 309 mins back in 2019-20.
Great players that they undeniably are... the Breakers got them at a very raw stage where the benefits that they bring off the court simply don’t translate on it. Maybe Rayan Rupert will be different but the evidence doesn’t exactly scream exception to the rule. He’s basically the same age as Dieng was when he arrived and fits a very similar profile.
In fairness, there are many reasons why the Breakers have sucked these past few years and giving extended minutes to prospect players who are turnstiles on defence is merely one example. Lots more issues where that came from. But there has been a lot to like about the club’s work through this offseason so far and maybe, just maybe, Mody Maor is beginning to fix some things.
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