KEY POINTS:
Don't expect another superstar individual like Carlos Powell to join the Breakers for this year's ANBL.
Despite the Breakers' modest 2006 season, Powell carved out a stellar individual stat sheet, leading the league in scoring with 28.2 points per game. He was also the Breakers' top rebounder with 8.2 a game, represented the international side in the All Star game and took out the slam dunk competition.
But the bottom line on Powell, who is now plying his trade in the Ukraine, is that he was not a team player. His individual efforts weren't enough to transform the Breakers into a winning team.
"Sometimes when you bring an American in they are thinking about going on somewhere else - they are here just trying to get their numbers, so we have to be really careful," Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis says.
The signing of Tall Black shooting guard Kirk Penney had clarified the Breakers' import requirements, with Lemanis now targeting an out-and-out point guard and a combination forward. "When you take all the locals we have in place now, we have a good core of players who are talented enough for the Breakers to do well. They are also team-based people, they will play within a team structure and do what's best for the team," he says.
"We need to ensure that the imports we add to that mix complement that rather than detract from it.
"At the end of the day, everybody on the team is only as good as the team's results. Sometimes you need to sacrifice your individual performance for the team to do well. When you can get that happening, that's when you are going to have a very good team."
