Basketball: Injured Olson plays one more game

Aaron Olson won't let his strained Achilles stop him taking the court tonight. It's a matter of pride.

Olson and captain Paul Henare, the only players to have played in all of the Breakers' 32 games, will play against the Melbourne Tigers at Trusts Stadium for what is the Breakers' last game of the ANBL season.

"He limps to the bench when I sub him off and every time I ask him if he's okay to go back on he assures me everything is okay," said coach Andrej Lemanis.

Olson's contribution in the defeat by the Tigers last Wednesday was less than his usual high-rate, high-scoring game and the heels are surely to blame.

With the front line of Rich Melzer and Brian Green firing now and Ben Pepper delivering as usual, holes have opened for Olson whereas earlier in the season he was the Breakers' marked man, their best scorer.

So his contribution from outside the three-point line may be critical tonight against a Tigers team that is taller and defensively tough in the inside lanes.

The Breakers gave the Tigers a 16-point first-quarter start on Wednesday and never recovered. But they out-scored the visitors in the second quarter and matched them for the last two periods.

"We take confidence from that and obviously we can be competitive with them, we need to do it for 48 minutes," Lemanis said.

Since Wednesday the work in training has been aimed at stopping the easy lay-ups the Tigers scored on Wednesday and improving the passing to create holes rather than relying heavily on individual dribbles.

It is the players' last chance to impress and earn contracts for 2006-07, only Pepper signed so far. Lemanis said he wanted to keep the core of the side together but that would come down to dollars and cents.

The free agents list comes out two weeks after the playoffs end on March 5.

The Breakers management wants those it intends to keep contracted before then.

* BREAKERS V TIGERS

Trusts Stadium, Henderson, 7.30 tonight

NZ Breakers: Paul Henare, Aaron Olson, Brian Green, Rich Melzer, Ben Pepper, bench Lindsay Tait, Mika Vukona, Ben Thompson, Tim Behrendorff, Brent Charleton

Tigers: Darryl McDonald, Dave Thomas, Stephen Hoare, Neil Mottram, Chris Anstey, bench Daryl Corletto, David Stiff, Gerard Leonard, Tommy Greer, Braith Cox.