Breakers embrace "difficult moment"

The New Zealand Breakers’ Finals chances hang by a thread, following Sunday’s heartbreaking loss to Tasmania.

That result leaves them two wins behind the sixth-placed JackJumpers, with just three rounds remaining.

As such, the Breakers are in must-win territory, needing to claim victory in each of their four remaining fixtures.

The first of them is on Thursday against the in-form South East Melbourne Phoenix, and if that task wasn’t already hard enough, the Breakers might go into that match with a depleted lineup.

Petteri Koponen’s side are already without Sam Mennenga (wrist), Rob Baker II (knee) and Izayah Le’Afa (foot) and now Parker Jackson-Cartwright (illness) is under an injury cloud for the Round 20 match.

The Breakers announced on Thursday that Next Star Karim Lopez would also miss the Phoenix clash.

"I just hope we've got some of the guys ready to go and they will be there... I'd be much happier if [the injured players] were with the group," Koponen said to RNZ.

"It's a difficult moment but we have to have that next man up mentality and no excuses."

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One player who has stepped up lately and will be leaned-on again heavily on Thursday at Spark Arena is import Izaiah Brockington.

The American guard has rattled off eight straight games of double-figure scoring, including 24 during Sunday’s loss, but knows his team are going to need to focus on the other end of the court if they are going to compete with the Phoenix.

"Our biggest challenge is just going to be on the defensive end. They've been scoring really well for the past few games so our main thing is just figuring out how we get stops and turn those stops into points,” Brockington said.

"We feel like they pressure a lot but we saw a few openings last game where they were over helping or they were a little wild but we've just got to stop them from getting threes, getting offensive rebounds, getting whatever they want on that end."

Thursday’s fixture tips off at 5.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN.

‍Read the full story here >> Breakers stars miss training as injury concerns grow