No doubt the hapless Hawks have had their fair share of ribbing this season but captain Paora Winitana isn't laughing too hard any time soon.
It's not because Winitana doesn't have a humorous bone in his body but more so because bones elsewhere in his torso have left him wincing in silence.
The 36-year-old has bit his bottom lip in the last two games through considerable discomfort due to cracked ribs to play for the HBS Bank-sponsored team in the Bartercard National Basketball League (NBL).
"No it's not a laughing matter at all," Winitana said last night from Hamilton before their game against First Advice Waikato Pistons tips off today at 6pm.
The game against bottom dwellers Pistons at the Hamilton Boys' High School gym is the first clash of the sides for the Tab Baldwin-coached Hawks who are out of the Final Fours to be staged at the Pettigrew-Green Arena in Napier next month.
Winitana took a knock to his hip/rib area in the losing match against the Wellington Saints in the capital city 10 days ago but soldiered on in last Saturday's match at home against the victorious Manawatu Jets.
"I cracked my ribs in the same area when I was playing for the Adelaide 36ers in the '08-09 season."
However, the former Tall Black guard was loathe to use that as an excuse for his lack of prowess although Baldwin points out it must affect his ability to shimmy and shoot the ball, let alone experiment with the Euro Step craze.
"He was great in the first half [against the Jets] and then trailed off in the second half," the coach said last night.
A circumspect Winitana is looking at the bigger picture of how the flightless Hawks have fared this season.
"If it is painful then it should be nothing, really, at this time of the season.
"In the last couple of games my percentages have not been too flashy so I'm definitely not going to use the rib as an excuse because it comes down to my dumb shot selections," he said, adding players had a tendency to blame injuries if their performance was not up to par.
He felt the Hawks' last game at home was there for everyone to scrutinise, to draw their own conclusions and no facade would cover their shortcomings.
While the Hawks' rebounding was commendable against one of the biggest teams in the NBL, the Jets, Winitana said winning games was dependent on many other facets of play.
"I was playing No 4 or No 5 marking Nick [Horvath] while Dion [Prewster] was almost in the No 4 position."
A cursory glance at the NBL standings showed the Hawks, especially, couldn't go into tonight's game with a lackadaisical attitude of hitting the highway back home with three points overnight or tomorrow in a season when new kids on the block Waitakere Rangers posted a stunning victory in Auckland.
Mindful North Island will be in the grip of an icy battering, Winitana preferred to sleep in Hamilton and drive back with the team tomorrow morning to host the Taranaki Mountaineers at the PG Arena in Taradale.
"It's all about rest and recovery although we should have been ready as a team in the pre-season for any scenario."
The Hawks join Taranaki, above them, as well as Waitakere Rangers and the Pistons below them as teams eliminated from the NBL playoffs.
Baldwin said while Waikato were among the strugglers of this year with Waitakere, they boast a centre/power forward in Zac Atkinson who averages 19.3 points a game and is the rebounding yardstick on 14.8.
"Zac's an import and is near the top of the rebounding stats in the league," he said of Atkinson who is topping the overall power rankings.
The other import is Garrius Holloman who is averaging 19.5 points, 0.1 below Hawks US import slasher Brian Greene who returns tonight after serving a match suspension following his altercation with veteran Saints forward Dillon Boucher last week.
"Garrius plays a bit like Brian. He started playing for the Jets and in that game he gave us trouble, too," Baldwin said of Holloman who crossed the floor to Waikato.
While rebounding has been an issue for the Hawks, he stressed it had as much to do with the lack of big men among his troops as it did with technique and effort.
"Our ability to control Atkinson is big deal because he's big and tough."
Playing good basketball was imperative, he said, but injecting young peripheral players for game time was also important although it wouldn't be at the expense of losing any games for the remainder of the season.
Perth Wildcats guard Everard Bartlett was "nowhere near 100 per cent" due to an ankle injury but a decision would be made to give him some game time early today although it's not a done deal that he'll play tomorrow, either.
Veteran point guard Aidan Daly is out with a knee injury, two-year-old flare up following surgery.
Three-point shooting, Baldwin said, wasn't about players running on to the court with premeditated notions of scoring.
"Three-points is the result of a good offensive structure," he said, emphasising Greene and Bartlett were out of the last game's equation and with Winitana injured, the task was always going to be difficult.
"Our primary weapons were not there or not 100 per cent so that put pressure on others," he explained, adding it was a burden import Darko Cohadarevic had to shoulder although young talent Alonzo Burton had put his hand up, too.
A "very angry and frustrated" Greene, Baldwin said, would be itching to play tonight.
"That decision [NBL board's to suspend Greene last Saturday] is a travesty.
"I just don't know how to comment on it. It just defies common sense so you're left speechless," he said, feeling it was perhaps a blessing in disguise if he was rendered speechless in a season where he found himself in the doldrums with the whistleblowers after he was ejected from the court in the loss to Taranaki before serving a suspension against the Rangers.
"It's a much bigger issue and it needs to be resolved otherwise the NBL will suffer."
Pistons coach Doug Courtney, 40, said as a returning franchise they were always going to struggle but the lack of wins didn't reflect the incremental improvements they had been making.
"As long as we keep on improving we'll be fine," Courtney said.