"100% on Me": Maor Takes Blame for Breakers Loss

After a season in which they’ve consistently beaten teams into submission with their sheer physicality, desire and willingness to do the dirty work, suddenly the New Zealand Breakers look vulnerable.

Coming off a heart-stopping three-point loss to Perth on Tuesday night, the Breakers took on Melbourne United in Christchurch, only to fall by seven points to a side battling hard to scrape into the play-in.

The Breakers looked some way short of the energy they’ve showed in most of their games this year, and the fact they played in Perth just 48 hours earlier and had to embark on the longest flight in NBL basketball may have had some impact.

Head coach Mody Maor isn’t willing to use the extended travel as an excuse for the defeat though.

“Three games in five days, a red-eye night with no sleep after a heart-breaking loss in Perth – all those things factor in,” Maor said post-game. “But we’re professional athletes and these are professional basketball players.

“We have the privilege of playing important games this month, so the circumstances are what they are.

“We didn’t perform up to par, and when the team doesn’t perform as a whole that’s the coaches responsibility. That’s 100 per cent on me.

“It doesn’t necessarily get a lot easier from here moving forward but I trust our guys are going to bounce back and put in a better performance.”

The Breakers played the game without star import Barry Brown Jr – who is currently sidelined with a hamstring injury – and the offence struggled without the influence of one of the competition’s leading scorers.

While they were astute defensively, the Breakers failed to reach the 20-point mark in any of the four quarters against United, and Brown’s ability to break the game open through individual brilliance was missed – as were his 20.2 points per game.

They also only shot 33 per cent from the field – a far cry from their season average of 47 per cent.

Maor says his side has won without Brown in the line-up before, and it’s prepared to do it again.

“Two weeks seems realistic,” Maor said of Brown’s recovery time.

“All of or players are important. There isn’t one player in our rotation if you take out I say ‘no problem, we can keep going’.

“It was great to have the whole team for one game, I guess that’s not on the cards now but that’s fine – we’ve been through it before.

“We’ve been through games without Barry and won, and we will go through games without Barry and win again.”

New Zealand continues its tough stretch of games on Sunday afternoon, when they host the Cairns Taipans at Spark Arena.