Basketball: 100,000 reasons to beat Breakers

The stakes have risen before Thursday's crucial Australian National Basketball League match in Auckland, with the Breakers' opponents handed a giant financial incentive.

The Breakers' hopes of a top-four playoff berth will end if they lose their penultimate match, against the Wollongong Hawks at the North Shore Events Centre.

Victory also will not guarantee anything for the fifth-placed Breakers, who have a 12-win 13-loss record, while their fourth-placed rivals are 13-11, but will leave their hopes alive going into the final round.

The Breakers have won their last three matches to breathe life into their campaign and will need more of the same to beat a Hawks side who have trumped them in their three meetings this year.

And the Hawks players will have an extra gleam in their eye after news that a Wollongong club benefactor has offered the players a giant prize if they win the ANBL crown.

Indian mining magnate Arun Jagatramka will give the players and coaches more than $100,000 in share options in his company as prizemoney if they go all the way.

The Hawks are the only New South Wales team left in the competition and it was Jagatramka who effectively saved the ailing club last year by putting up the $1 million guarantee required by the ANBL.

The Breakers will not have such a carrot but will be determined to continue a late-season burst which could leave them in contention going into their final match at home to the Gold Coast next week.

Veteran forward Tony Ronaldson says the only game occupying the minds of the Breakers is Thursday's.

"We are not concerned with how many games we have won, how many we might win or how many we need to win," Ronaldson said.

"Our only focus is on winning the next game and working hard in practice to give ourselves the best shot at achieving that. And that means all of our energy is on scouting the Hawks and preparing to play them at home."

The Breakers are sweating over the fitness of key players Rick Rickert and Tom Abercrombie.

Abercrombie is still troubled by the ankle injury that ruled him out of recent games, with the swingman aggravating the injury against the Gold Coast Blaze before taking no part in the win over the Townsville Crocodiles last Wednesday.

Centre Rickert is also struggling with an ankle injury after limping out of the Crocodiles game in the final quarter and has taken no part in training so far this week.

- NZPA