PJC struggling, Breakers "out of shape"

Chris Pike for NBL.com.au

New Zealand Breakers coach Petteri Koponen says his team is looking slow on their feet and in their heads, two games into the Hungry Jack's NBL26 Season.

A disappointing home loss on Friday against the Brisbane Bullets and a dismal showing on the road to Melbourne United on Sunday have made for far from the ideal start.

That's only exacerbated by what looks to be a serious rib injury for their marquee man, Parker Jackson-Cartwright.

Jackson-Cartwright played just 14 minutes against United at John Cain Arena, clearly troubled and in pain.

"There is no magic tricks, we need to experience this as a group and Parker got hurt and we'll have to see how he's feeling," Koponen said.

"He already hasn’t been able to practice too much with the group and it's still been going around for him with that problem. He's trying and he's pushing, but obviously there is some discomfort there that is holding him back.

"He's a big part of what we try to do, so I hope he is getting healthy quickly, because it's hard to replace him in our system with how we want to play. Our medical staff are doing all the best they can do to get him ready for the next week."

Two games into the season and what has been staring Koponen in the face is that his team just doesn’t look as prepared to begin NBL26 as their opponents.

"The biggest issue right now and it was the same last game, it looks like we're out of shape, out of sync and our feet are slow, and our head is slow right now," Koponen continued.

"Maybe it's the rest that we only practiced once this week, we have travelled and have some guys coming back after sickness and the injuries.

"The chemistry is not there, we're learning how to play with each other and that's the first thing for me that we need to fix. We need to be able to run up and down the floor for the basketball in this league.

"We need to get everybody having a solid practice week and build from there. We were so bad today and obviously back-to-back doesn’t help, but to be able to play in this league we have to be in better basketball shape."