Basketball: Breakers eager to finish year in style

Corey Webster will look to find his scoring touch against the Kings. Photo / Getty Images

Christmas Day could have been a little less festive in the households of the Breakers' players.

For one, they had to cut short Christmas lunch and head to the airport for a flight to Sydney ahead of tonight's clash with the Kings.

And that lunch might have been marred by the bitter taste left by the humbling they received on Sunday in Cairns, the team snapping at their heels. But the Breakers could soon have a holiday to relish, with tonight's encounter followed by an eight-day break before their next game.

Victory over the Kings would see the Breakers head to the beaches atop the standings, with the defeat in Cairns but a distant memory. A loss, however, and the otherwise impressive first half of the season will be provided an unfortunate postscript.

Assistant coach Paul Henare was confident his charges would have no issue finding focus.

"We need to stay in work mode and stay with a bit of an edge about us, even though that may be a bit tougher given the time of year," he said.

The Breakers have dealt with an arduous schedule in recent weeks, tonight's game is their sixth in 20 days. The workload appeared to have taken its toll against the Taipans but, instead of blaming the calendar, the Breakers were falling back on a couple of the NZ club's core beliefs.

The first: No excuses. And the other? "Our team ethos is we don't get too high after a win and we don't get too low after a loss," Henare said. "It was one game of a 28-game season."

Given that game saw the Breakers shoot 0-17 from beyond the arc while their top scorers, Corey Webster and Cedric Jackson, went 4-29 from the field, it would be easy for the coaches to chalk it up as an off night and move on.

But that approach would hardly help if infected with similar profligacy in Sydney. So Henare and head coach Dean Vickerman have spent time devising different strategies for when the shooting radar is askew.