Breakers' Physicality Creates Tough Questions

The New Zealand Breakers are a hard at it, physically imposing, aggressive team. That much has been established in NBL23.

Led by coach Mody Maor and import pair Dererk Pardon and Jarrell Brantley, a large part of the Breakers’ success this season has been their ability to physically impose themselves on the opposition and almost beat them into a form of submission through sheer willpower and strength.

Often after games coaches have lamented the in-your-face style of defence played by New Zealand, but Pete Hooley says their season-long approach to defence consistently asks tough questions of the referees.

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of times where I think they’re getting away with foul calls … [but] their level of physicality can’t be matched,” Hooley said on NBL Today.

“When you do it from pre-season, when you do it from the Blitz, from the first game, referees are going to come into games like ‘ok, this team is really physical’.

“I think 75 or 80 per cent of the time it’s as legal as it comes. They play with their chest, they play with their body, and they throw their weight around.

“By doing that from the start of the season you’re going to get a couple of extra calls here or there because everybody expects you to be physical and it makes the referee’s job a little harder.”

The Breakers overcame the Adelaide 36ers by just two points on Sunday night, but they could have easily been on the wrong side of the result. In fact, they would have been if Ian Clark had hit his last gasp three-point attempt.

After jumping out to a seven-point half-time lead New Zealand was slowly reeled back in by an aggressive Adelaide side that upped its intensity in the second half.

Hooley says the performances of Will McDowell-White is a large factor in the Breakers’ strong run of form.

“When he’s out there everyone seems so settled and this team operates so well together,” Hooley said of the New Zealand guard.

“They only won by two but it looked like they could have blown the game open at numerous points.

“We saw in the second half that Adelaide knew they needed to lift their physicality. [When] they did that all of a sudden they were back in the game.”