Tell you one thing, there’s been no shortage of drama around the Breakers organisation in recent times. Good drama, bad drama, and ugly drama. A little bit of everything to keep everyone engaged.
So no one told you life was gonna be this way / QB’s a joke, coach’s broke, your pass rush DOA / It’s like your offence is stuck in second gear / When it hasn’t been your play, your drive, your game, or even your year…
Week two of the season is always a notorious one, it’s where the overreactions from week one really sizzle and the convictions of those preseason predictions are really tested. The clever pundit will take that first round with a grain of salt – we don’t know the context of those performances yet because we don’t know which teams are good or not. Most tend not to though.
If you take it in isolation then it was just a pensive moment. Dillon Boucher, a legend of both Breakers basketball and New Zealand basketball, a multiple championship winner whose jersey hangs in the rafters for this club, had resigned as general manager of the New Zealand Breakers.
Oh yes. That is Tall Blacks basketball right there. Two more games to determine their exact finishing position and there just so happened to be a bit on the line as well with a spot in the Olympic qualifying tournaments next year to slip into the shopping cart as well if possible.
Bit late on the ol’ picks because the Quarterback Rankings took ages to do and hey I’m a busy fella after all. So have a read of that thing first because it’s got lots of words in it. Lots of words and lots of numbers too. Sequential numbers, just the way you like them. Also got a few of them pesky opinions too which is what you’re here for but I used heaps of them up over there already.
The result wasn’t the important thing as the Tall Blacks faced Greece in their final first round game at this basketball World Cup. It was a game where the winner would advance and the loser would fall into the classification rounds but when you’re the heavy underdog coming up against the NBA MVP then you don’t have the luxury of knowing that a positive performance would equate to a positive result.
The annual extravaganza is back for 2019 and you’d better believe there are fiery takes and wild opinions.
This was their chance. This was the one they could really target. Lose this and the other two wouldn’t even matter, a win and they’d keep alive any legit hopes of advancing beyond the first group stage.
So when the Tall Blacks came up against Brazil in their World Cup opener it didn’t matter how well they’d gone in their extended preparations. Those preparations are just ways of ensuring they’re at their best as they try to bridge the talent gap that already exists between them and their opponents.
So here’s a thing about some of the major storylines and events that have taken place since the 2018 NFL season concluded (the Patriots beat the Rams 13-3 in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history, by the way. In case you’d forgotten).
It’s rare that something unexpected happens within elite sports that are so delicately devoured by fans and media alike… but the retirement of NFL quarterback Andrew Luck was one of those stunning moments that instantly shake you to the core.
Last week they polished off a couple games against Japan, this week the Tall Blacks got some very useful preparation in against the might of Canada… who may have won both but the two games served up drastically different vibes for the Tall Blacks going into the World Cup.
Dunno about you but I’m getting pretty pumped about this basketball World Cup. Most teams are amassing as we speak, getting in the final licks that they hope will give them that crucial one percent extra, with a tad over two weeks to go until the big show tips off.
And with a triple swoop on Wednesday the Breakers have now completed their roster for the upcoming season. ‘Director of Basketball’ Dan Shamir will have a dozen players to juggle and rotate, as well as Terry Li and with two more development players yet to be named.
We’re still two weeks away from the day that Paul Henare announces the Tall Blacks’ official World Cup squad. Before then there’s a training camp in Japan (we’re they are right now) with a couple games against their hosts to follow, then two games against Canada in Sydney… and straight after that we’ll get the final cuts to the squad.
The word was that there was going to be a new Breakers announcement on Wednesday, and a big one too. Then the word was that it was going to be a double announcement which makes it even bigger.
Sooner or later some clever bugger is going to write the definitive history of the first eleven years of the Oklahoma City Thunder and it’s going to be essential reading. Since the franchise upped and moved from Seattle they’ve remained one of the most fascinating teams out there… and it all comes down to three straight draft picks.
New Zealand’s only professional basketball team just signed a Chinese teenager to a development player contract. Terry Li comes from the NBA Global Academy which runs out of Basketball Australia’s Centre of Excellence. He’s a 198cm tall guard, meant to be extremely athletic, and he’s signed on a three year deal.
And there it is. We knew Russell Westbrook was going to be traded, it was just a matter of where and when and a cheeky Woj Bomb on a Friday arvo cleared all that up. Russell Westbrook to the Rockets, Chris Paul and two future first rounders (plus two potential pick swaps) to the Thunder in return.