Basketball: Breakers trying to break even

Practices are largely meaningless affairs.

The roster appears as skinny as Kate Moss on a 40-hour famine. Key players are injured. The Breakers are backing up from a disastrous 2004-05 season.

They've got a new coach and a swag of new players hoping they'll gel like a successful blind date.

The team is New Zealand by name, yet is providing a professional career path for only four New Zealand players.

It seems right to ask: What in the name of Stan Hill are the Breakers doing?

In that respect coach Andrej Lemanis is willing to shed a little light.

When he took the job vacated by Frank Arsego at the end of last season he knew it was going to be hard - that was part of the attraction. What he didn't know was that he would be coaching to a near-empty gym until a few days before season's start on September 4. Most of the Breakers are Tall Blacks and are away on tour at present, plus injuries and players yet to arrive on contract means the Breakers could just about field the numbers for a netball team at present - hardly the ideal build-up. "It's not where I planned it in my mind, as far as the progression of the team goes," Lemanis said.

The team with no coach is a common thread in professional sport, but when the roles are reversed it would be a decent joke if only the implications weren't so serious: "It means we will be a little bit underdone at the start of the season as far as how much stuff we will be able to run."

Lemanis is practised at painting positive pictures. He talks not of making the playoffs but of using the playoffs as a stepping stone to winning the championship, but a slow start is the worst-case scenario for the Breakers.

Any hopes they have of making the top eight playoffs rest on their ability to turn Waitakere's Trusts Stadium into a fortress. Unfortunately their home games are confined to the start of the season, the time when even the optimists concede the Breakers will be at their most vulnerable.

In their last 22 matches, the Breakers will play just six at home. During that time they will also be taking games to the new Manukau facility and the North Shore Events Centre but there really is no place like home.

"It's a bit of an issue," Lemanis admitted. "One of the themes we're taking this year is we need to protect home court at all costs. If you can win 50 per cent of your games you'll make the playoffs so the logical conclusion is if you win your home games you'll be OK.

"I understand why they're moving the home games around from a marketing point of view... having said that, to come and play every game here [Trusts Stadium] would be awesome and it's an advantage to play on one court. It's not something this organisation can do right now."

At least the roster is becoming clearer, albeit in a circuitous manner. They have extended their core roster to nine - Ben Pepper, Clifton Bush, Paul Henare, Aaron Olsen, AJ Mastrovich, Lindsay Tait, Mika Vukona, Tim Behrendorff and new import Rich Melzer - with North Harbour's Brent Charleton filling one of two development roster spots. In effect they have just one spot for an import left. That was to be Mike Chappell, the free-scoring import of the past two seasons.

During the week the Herald on Sunday discovered that Chappell was to be jettisoned for a player capable of playing at both ends of the court. When that was put to Lemanis, he said as far as he was aware Chappell was still coming pending on a finger injury. A few hours later, a release went out to the effect he and the Breakers had come to an early-release agreement.

The Breakers recently added height to their team with young Australian Behrendorff. The seven-footer impressed Lemanis although his slight frame will make it difficult to establish himself in the low post just yet.

What the signing does is open the Breakers up to further claims of Australianisation. This is something Melburnian Lemanis is willing to defend.

He argues with more than a modicum of commonsense that the Breakers being successful is much more important to grass roots basketball here than stuffing the team full of Kiwis to satisfy the thirst for a local flavour. Underperforming fan favourite Pero Cameron went and Dillon Boucher's services were no longer required meaning there are just four Tall Blacks - Tait, Olsen, Vukona and Henare - on the roster (though Bush is a naturalised American and could play for the Tall Blacks).

" I do believe we need a solid New Zealand content to be successful here. Having said that the guys have got to be good enough to step up and play at that level. "It's a bigger scheme than just what happens this year."

With such a depleted squad Lemanis has brought in youngsters like Dan Ryan, Dylan Perfect-Tait and Jarrod Kenny to show them just how much work is needed to get to NBL level.

Many would argue the Breakers need a lot of work to get to NBL level, but that's pure speculation. One thing is certain: if Lemanis gets them anywhere near his goals this season, he would have earned every single penny they're paying him.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY