In the end it came down to the final game of the season. Had Melbourne been able to win at home against Perth then that woulda done it for the Breakers, but no, they fell 96-94 in a bit of a thriller and the Wildcats find themselves in the playoffs for the 31st year in a row at the expense of the kiwi side. The Breakers, who last missed the playoffs in 2014, now head into an unfamiliarly long off-season.

When you finish with an even record, you can’t really argue. The Breakers lost as many games as they won after all. Maybe they could have snuck another win or two in there and that would have been the difference but that’s not how things work. Hey, this was always gonna be a transitional season. A new coach, a new general manager, a symbolic divorce from their most successful ever import… lots of things to work through and it’s a compliment to the structures in place that those three things didn’t become defining factors in this campaign.

What did was the injury epidemic. You’d have to go a long way to find a team more crippled by injuries than this one has been over the last year, from stress fractures to fractured hands to infections in the knee to… *shivers*… dislocations of the eyeball.

The Breakers used 17 different players this season including five imports. They were far from the only team to struggle with health, look at Melbourne United who had similar dramas, but the four teams who made the playoffs (Adelaide, Cairns, Perth & Illawarra) were the four teams with at least seven players that played 25 or more games. Funny that.

Only two Breakers played all 28 games this season. Illawarra had nine ever-present players, an entire rotation, while all the Breakers had was Kirk Penney and Alex Pledger. Penney who played a team-high 858 minutes this season at age 36 and Pledger who hasn’t been fully fit for about three years before now.

Most NBL Minutes This Season:

1. Kevin Lisch (SYD) – 916 mins (30 years old)
2. Jason Cadee (SYD) – 877 mins (25yo)
3. Jerome Randle (ADL) – 868 mins (29yo)
4. Torrey Craig (BRI) – 864 mins (26yo)
5. Kirk Penney (NZB) – 858 mins (36yo)

Captain Kirk is still a superb player and he averaged a tasty 17.3 points per game this season while shooting 41.3% from deep. Down on last year with Illawarra but an invaluable piece of the puzzle all the same. His role doesn’t involve too much running, he spots up for threes and he’s leaden footed on defence, yet you can’t help but feel that’s a lot of minutes for someone his age. Getting 850+ minutes of pure energy from Cadee or Randle is a different story than 850+ from Penney.

Looking at the 2016-17 Breakers, the one thing they were lacking was a genuine gun of an import player. They went through a few but only when they hauled in Kevin Dillard did they have a guy with the ability to take over a game. But then they probably figured they didn’t need one. They had Kirk Penney and Tom Abercrombie and Corey Webster to score all their points, plus they had something that even the best teams can struggle for in this league and that’s depth. Rob Loe shooting threes off the bench as a big fella, Akil Mitchell coming in and scooping up rebounds, Shea Ili hustling and hassling.

Well that last one got the DENIED stamp first as Ili was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his back before the season had even started. He suffered it during the NBL for the Wellington Saints and played through it, even on Tall Blacks duty, but you can’t exactly run from a back injury. He was booked in for surgery and Aussie guard Isaih Tueta was signed to replace him ‘til he was fit again.

Corey Webster also got hurt in pre-season but he kept on trucking. Not all that well, mind. Shooting at just 35.7% from the field (and 28.0% from 3pt), hip and back trouble eventually meaning he’d only play 15 games before he was shut down and he struggled badly in those 15 as well. The fact that he also had some legal dramas going on off-court sure didn’t help either.

What’s next? Oh yeah after only six games their starting point guard Ben Woodside picked up a serious ankle injury that would end his season prematurely, although he stayed on with the team for a while afterwards just in case. His veteran defence and passing ability had been a steadying factor in the early games and losing him in an overtime win in Melbourne ripped a hole in their roster balance. Webster, himself already ailing, had to play extra PG minutes. Keep in mind that Ili was still out for another five games at this point. With Woodside out they had to go searching for new overseas talent. They settled on David Stockton.

Stockton scored 17 points in his first game and looked sharp. Those were heights he wouldn’t again reach as his small stature and an inconsistent jump shot held him to an average of only 8.3 points in his 10 matches (of which they lost seven). The game that he debuted in also happened to coincide with Rob Loe picking up a foot injury that cost him two games. Pretty soon Shea Ili got the green light as well, he’d appear in each of the last 17 games. Tueta returned home to Brisbane mercifully unscathed.

Which is more than you can say for Stockton who injured his back and was cut in early January as the team looked to restock for a last tilt at the semis. Woodside was officially released at the same time. Woody was definitely injured, Stocko was close to a comeback but wasn’t quite ready and with the race towards the playoffs as close as it was and their top scorer from last season also out (as well as their starting SF by now), there were too many immobile bodies on the squad.

Stockton might have been retained if he’d played better but he wasn’t so he wasn’t. Instead Paul Carter and Kevin Dillard showed up and the pair would play in every game they were available for (11 for PC, 9 for K.Dilla). Although Carter did rough up his knee in a game against Cairns which seriously limited him that day. Nobody really remembers that, not considering the other injury that was suffered that day…

Tom Abercrombie broke his hand in training before Christmas, Paul Carter was initially a straight replacement for him (although he filled Webster’s roster spot). While Penney had taken a month or two to settle in and Webster had been firing bricks all over the show, it was Abercrombie that held things cool as Mr Consistent. They said up to six weeks, Abercrombie was back in five and after playing 27 minutes off the bench against Cairns he started the last three games. Clearly not at 100% though, he shot 9/28 in his four games post-return – part of that was also having to log extra minutes at power forward to make up for other injuries, meaning he was getting guarded by bigger bodies than he was used to.

By this stage it was already clear that if this team didn’t make the final four, it’d be injuries that they blamed (or rather that we blamed, they wouldn’t start making excuses themselves). The opening game of the season saw them use nine players. Come mid-January only five of those players were fit and available. It’s a little unfair to include Izzy Tueta in this conversation since he was only ever a short term replacement so consider that an eight-man rotation. Of a possible 224 games that those nine players could have appeared in, they appeared in 166 – that’s 48 missed and that doesn’t even include Ili who would have been in that rotation (183/252 if you count him) or the games that Webster played well short of full fitness.

But of course it only got worse. Akil Mitchell had been a familiar face in every game when he suffered probably the most gruesome injury you’re ever likely to see on a sports field that doesn’t involve any broken bones. Getting a stray finger to the face, his eyeball was partially dislodged from the socket. Eventually they slid it back in at the hospital and thankfully there shouldn’t be any lasting damage but we didn’t know that at the time. At the time it was simply horrifying, several of the players and fans who were close enough to see looked visibly disturbed, it was one of those things that you can never un-see. There will be people whose lives are now marked ‘Before I saw Akil Mitchell’s eye fall out’ and ‘After I saw Akil Mitchell’s eye fall out’. Enough to make you long for those innocent days of fractured ankles and stress fractures.

Stunningly, Mitchell recovered instantly enough that he was considered a chance to play again this season, though after a couple weeks he decided to seek some extra medical advice back in America as things progressed a little slower than hoped. It’s not an injury that many doctors have much experience with, especially in New Zealand, you can imagine. He missed the last three games.

And then just to top it all off, the iron man of the franchise, Mika Vukona, who has played 324 out of a possible 329 games over the last decade, found himself in hospital with an infected knee. Only last season he lost a 211-game consecutive appearance streak with a sore hamstring. Two unplayable injuries in two years? Unthinkable.

Even ignoring the way they churned through international guards, if you consider the core of this Breakers unit to be Vukona, Abercrombie, Webster, Penney and Pledger then that lot barely had half a season together. All those voodoo dolls and all that witchcraft going on in Perth, y’all can stop that now.

On the positive side, the Breakers still have two more contracted years of Penney and with Pledger getting through a full season that’s a great sign for the future as well. Vukona is also getting a bit older but he remains an asset while Abercrombie and Webster should be back to full fitness next season – even if there are some question marks over Webster for other reasons. Rob Loe ought to become more effective, he was probably the most underutilized dude on the roster though a lot of that was his own fault because of his constant fouling. Shea Ili and Finn Delany both showed fantastic promise in the season closer and you can assume all of these lads will be back again for next season. Add in a couple of impactful imports and bingo. They may have missed the playoffs this season, but they were bloody close considering it all.

Past Winners

2016-17: Kirk Penney

2015-16: Cedric Jackson

2014-15: Cedric Jackson

2013-14: Mika Vukona

Season MVP Standings

Kirk Penney – 30

Alex Pledger – 27

Tom Abercrombie – 20

Mika Vukona – 19

Akil Mitchell – 16

(We give three points to the best player, two to numero dos and one to the third fella each game based on individual performance and tally them up over the season. Here’s how the final five shapes up, Kirk Penney’s scoring and consistent play edging him to the title, congrats to the legend on a prestigious honour.)