Breakers coach gets the fight he demanded

Gordie Herbert spent last week calling out his New Zealand Breakers for a lack of effort. In Launceston on Friday night, he got the fight he had been demanding, even if it ended in a fifth straight defeat.

Without import pair Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Charles Bediako in the second half, the Breakers clawed back from an 11-point hole and had a shot to win it on the buzzer before falling 79-77 to the Tasmania JackJumpers. For Herbert, it was a genuine step forward.

It was a far cry from the previous Friday night, when the Breakers’ home return ended in a seven-point loss to the Adelaide 36ers and Herbert couldn’t hold back about what he saw from his side in the first half. Effort, he said, should be non-negotiable, not something he has to coach.

There was no such complaint this time. It still wasn’t perfect, with the Breakers conceding the first seven points of the game and trailing by 11 early in the second quarter. But they closed the half on an 11-0 run and kept coming, cutting it to two late with the chance to either force overtime or win it on the buzzer.

“We lost the game, but to a certain extent I thought we got better, if that’s possible,” Herbert said.

“To a certain extent we’re in a results-oriented business and we get judged by results, but I thought our habits were better and our effort was really good.

“We won the rebounding battles, we just didn’t get to the foul line enough, and I thought our effort was outstanding.

“We never gave up. We were down most of the game and we came back multiple times. We got hurt on different things in the post on our switches, but we fixed it better in the fourth quarter and gave ourselves a chance.”

The numbers backed him up on the things within the Breakers’ control. They won the rebounding 37-30 and hauled in 13 offensive boards that turned into 23 second-chance points, despite losing two important defensive pieces late when Nelson Weidemann and Reuben Te Rangi fouled out.