Rickert Ready
Tagged in: In The News, NZ Breakers
Gary Birkett, Sunday Star Times
Rick Rickert is sick of talking about the back injury which cut him down after 13 games for the New Zealand Breakers in his debut season.
The Minnesota native, an all-action 211cm power forward who was averaging nearly 18 points and 12 rebounds per game, has returned from five months of rehab with fire in his belly.
“It will be good to turn on the afterburners and get up and down the court. I can’t wait,” Rickert told the Sunday Star- Times.
Rickert cut a forlorn figure on the sidelines when a disc protrusion in his lower back forced him out last November.
“It was a long, long process. Even when I went back to States I had to continue with it. I’m glad I stuck with it.
“I’m 100 percent ready to go.”
The Breakers, who made the playoffs for the first time in their five-year history last season, tip off the revamped 10-team Australian National Basketball League on Thursday against the Wollongong Hawks at North Shore Events Centre, the first of five home games in succession.
Signing Australasia’s premier point guard CJ Bruton has elevated the Breakers to among the title favourites, but with three teams from last season folding, the league is now crammed with talent, and making the top-six playoffs won’t be an uncontested lay-up.
“The talent we have on this team is good enough to get into the playoffs, but the talent in this league is phenomenal,” says Rickert.
Bruton, a savvy on-court leader and free-scoring iceman, will be the spark plug who charges up the offence.
He will need time to forge combinations with the likes of sharp- shooting Kiwi guard Kirk Penney, who averaged an eye-opening 24.2 points in his debut season, but Rickert says once they gell, watch out.
“We want to be No 1 but No 1 in the regular season doesn’t mean anything. What matters is what you do at the end.”
