Kings beaten, no answers to Breakers' firepower

While the injury woes haven’t subsided for the New Zealand Breakers, their form is building and the offensive firepower was on show led by former NBA gun Anthony Lamb in the 109-101 home win to the Sydney Kings.

It was the second grand final rematch this season between the two teams that played out and on Friday night at Spark Arena, the Breakers were on top virtually all evening with the on-going defensive concerns for the Kings continuing as they could do little to slow the home team.

That was despite New Zealand having lost forward Finn Delany to a calf injury this week with exciting import forward Zylan Cheatham still yet to return from a leg fracture, and Australian guard Will McDowell-White was returning after missing five matches.

The Breakers raced to a 21-6 lead with Izayah Le'afa (15 points) landed one of his four three-pointers for the game. Lamb was on his way to a game-high 24 points and took that lead to 23-6, and by quarter-time it was 29-17.

Le'afa hit another pair of threes midway through the second period to stretch the Breakers lead to 10 again. While the Sydney defence might be struggling, they don't lack scoring punch and by half-time drew level at 53-53.

New Zealand blew the game open to start the second half with a 9-0 run made up of triples from Lamb and Next Star Mantas Rubstavicius, and a three-point play from the Lithuanian 21-year-old on his way to 17 points.

That turned into a game deciding 23-8 run to start the second half for New Zealand and they held on to win by eight to improve to 6-9 on the season.

Breakers coach Mody Maor was delighted with his team's performance including Dan Fotu's first career start for eight points and four rebounds after Delany's injury.

"First we played fantastic basketball and Kings are a good basketball team who responded," Maor said.

"They're so versatile and every time we got punch or they made a run, we responded through things that are entrenched in our identity.

"That's stops, physicality, ball movement and something we haven’t always had which is the ability to respond when things don't go well."

Sydney are now 9-7 with Kouat Noi scoring 19 points, DJ Hogg 15 (eight assists), Alex Toohey 15 (seven rebounds) and Jaylen Adams 14.

They host the Illawarra Hawks on Christmas evening and while they did score another 101 points, coach Mahmoud Abdelfattah will be upset over the conceding of 109 points and their 20 turnovers from which the Breakers scored 27 points.

"It was the first few minutes of the first quarter and when you put yourself in a hole like that, it's tough to manage," he said.

"You come back and tie the game going into the half but you exert all that energy and then they go down 17 again, and are trying to push back from that.

"We just didn’t have enough juice and we can't fall back by 17 points two different times in two different halves and expect for a good outcome."

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL ROUND 12

NEW ZEALAND BREAKERS 109 (Lamb 24, Jackson-Cartwright 17, Rubstavicius 17)
SYDNEY KINGS 101 (Noi 19, Toohey 15, Hogg 15)

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