Basketball New Zealand

Oscar Forman had a 12-point, 13-rebound double-double as the Breakers took over the ANBL league lead (Photosport)

Marc Hinton, Fairfax Media
The New Zealand Breakers decided before last night’s top-of-the-table Australian National Basketball League clash against the South Dragons that they’d heard enough about how well the Melbournians were playing.

This huge contest, they finally agreed, was all about them.

And so it proved, the Breakers thumping Brian Goorjian‘s South Dragons in Auckland 112-98 to prove that, indeed, they, not the outfit that came in on an eight-match winning tear, are the ones that this league really needs to worry about.

With a Kirk Penney-led offensive masterclass against the NBL’s most suffocating defence, Andrej Lemanis‘ New Zealand side won an entertaining clash that immediately establishes the Breakers as the side they’re all chasing over the second half of this season.

The Breakers, now 11-3 for the season and on a four-match tear themselves, leapfrog their Melbourne visitors to grab No 1 spot on the table. The Dragons are 10-3 and suffer their first loss since the early stages of the season.

It was an emphatic performance from the Breakers who stood up to the blowtorch examination of the physical and intensive Dragons brilliantly. They made just seven turnovers all match – an outstanding stat that speaks volumes for the poise of this veteran-laden outfit. It also ticked off a couple of special celebrations perfectly, CJ Bruton‘s 350th NBL match and Tim Behrendorff‘s 100th game for the club marked in perfect fashion.

No one would have enjoyed it more than the resolute Lemanis who secured just his second victory over a Goorjian-coached side in 10 attempts.

“There was a lot made about going up against Goorj,” said a measured Lemais afterwards. “He’s a great coach but it’s just about your team focusing on what you can control. Right now we’ve got pretty good confidence in ourselves.

“I thought Dillon [Boucher] made a pretty good point right before the game. He said a lot’s been made about the fact the Dragons are top of the table. He said ‘hey, we’re pretty good as well, so we’ve just got to keep that confidence and belief in the group’.

“I think this group is starting to get it. To put up 112 points against the most miserly defensive team in the league is very pleasing, and to shoot it at 50 percent, I thought we did a great job of dealing with that pressure., They never really pushed us out of what we wanted to do.”

And, just to complete a pretty satisfactory night’s work, Lemanis also had praise for his defence which largely limited the potent Dragons attack, keeping them under 100 points and to under 40 percent from the floor.

“We’re starting to find our identity at that end of the floor and our defence just keeps getting better and better. The trust is coming. We played well on the road for three games, and to come home and play like that is very pleasing,” said Lemanis.

Goorjian described the Breakers as one of the three premier teams in the league (he interestingly did not include his own Dragons in that group), the best in the half-court game and a franchise that is finally bearing fruit after four years in the making.

He’s right, of course, the Breakers showing their balanced attack to lead pretty much all the way, with just too much firepower for the defensive-minded Dragons.

Penney led the way with a game-high 27 points (6/10 3PT, and 16 of them coming in a third-quarter virtuoso), the lethal Bruton slotted a cool 20 (6/8 FG) and added four boards, three steals and six assists, while the evergreen Tony Ronaldson stepped up with a big 19 (7/13 FG) and six rebounds.

It didn’t end there, though.

Both Oscar Forman (12 points, 13 boards) and Rick Rickert (10/10) had double-doubles, Dillon Boucher added his usual hustle plays and there was a nice bench effort from Behrendorff after Rickert struck early foul trouble.

It was also telling that the Breakers tallied an impressive 112 points against a relentless Dragons defence that had hitherto kept opponents to an average of 87 points a game.

The Breakers had figured it was going to be a battle, and so it was as the Dragons came out with plenty of spit and hiss, looking to apply pressure on defence and raise the tempo of the game off turnovers and missed shots.

But these Breakers have not got to where they are without having a bit of backbone about them, and Lemanis’ men handled themselves commendably throughout a competitive first half, leading 29-21 at the end of the first quarter and 55-45 by the halftime break.

Bruton, who lives for big matches like these, was the top Breakers scorer for the half with 12 points (3/4 FG, 2/3 3PT) and the veteran Ronaldson chimed in with eights points and four boards in a typically gritty display. Penney was largely kept quiet by some effective Dragons defence, but a late trey not only extended the home side’s lead to double-figures at the half, but took his tally to eight.

Joe Ingles was the danger man for the visitors with a game-high 14 first-half points and Tall Blacks big man Nick Horvarth weighed in with a useful eight off the bench.

A hot third quarter by Dragons point-guard Adam Gibson got the visitors right back into it early in the spell, with Bruton’s one-time understudy drilling a dozen points to get the Melbournians back to within three.

But then Penney caught fire himself, nailing three straight three-pointers at one stage and four long-range bombs for the spell as he rained in 16 points to lead the Breakers out to a decisive 91-73 lead.

From there it was pretty much prolonged garbage time, with the visitors unable to get close enough in the final quarter to make a game of it. Notably Ingles never re-entered the game in the final quarter for a Dragons side comprehensively outplayed.

NZ Breakers 112 (Kirk Penney 27, CJ Bruton 20, Tony Ronaldson 19, Oscar Forman 12, Rick Rickert 10) South Dragons 98 (Joe Ingles 16, Adam Gibson 16, Mark Worthington 14, Matt Burston 14, Nick Horvarth 11)
Breakers vs Dragons Box Score (28KB html)