Basketball: Baldwin joins list for Breakers job

Tab Baldwin (pictured) has competition for the Breakers coaching job, which includes an NBA assistant coach. Picture / Martin Sykes

Tall Blacks coach Tab Baldwin has applied for the Breakers coaching job.

Baldwin is one of 17 applicants being considered by the Breakers board following the leaked imminent demise of incumbent Frank Arsego with a handful of games to go.

The Breakers go to Perth to play tomorrow and Sunday with no chance of improving the bottom-of-the-table finish for 2005.

There's some irony in the fact the Breakers lost five games by one point this season; Perth had five one-point games in 1991. But Perth won all five and won the title.

Only three Breakers players are contracted beyond Sunday - Aaron Olson, Mike Chappell and Paul Henare.

The new coach will have much say in who else of the current roster is offered a contract. Baldwin will want Pero Cameron and will want him to trim down. But neither is a sitter for the job.

Among the applicants, which are believed to include about six New Zealand residents, is a current NBA assistant coach and a former ANBL title-winning coach as well as ANBL assistants.

The Breakers board will seek personality profiling details via questionnaire before compiling a shortlist of candidates for interview.

It is hoped the new coach will be in place well before the team leaves for a six-game tour of China in April.

Breakers general manager Peter Chapman said the club's first coach, Jeff Green, would "definitely not" be involved in the selection process.

That followed the suggestion from Baldwin's quarter that if Green was involved, he wouldn't be.

The club is also likely to look at bringing in another American player.

The current players would be judged on "performance via statistics, not reputations", he said.