Basketball: Breakers need title to prove a point

Andrej Lemanis. Photo / Kenny Rodger

They were the best team of the regular season by the breadth of the Tasman but it seems the Breakers will have to win the championship to get any respect in Australia.

Monday night's ANBL awards dinner amounted to a huge snub for a Breakers side that went 22-6 on the regular season, locking up first place with a month to spare.

Point guard Kevin Braswell picked up the best sixth man (sub) award, and Kirk Penney and Gary Wilkinson were voted on to the All NBL first team.

But that was the sum total of the recognition for the Breakers.

Wollongong Hawks point guard Gary Ervin was voted MVP, despite his club not making the playoffs.

Perhaps the biggest snub was reserved for Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis, who was overlooked for the coach of the year award despite his side compiling five more wins than the winner, Townsville's Trevor Gleeson.

"It is neither here nor there," said Lemanis. "I'd trade anything for a championship win. There are lots of coaches of the year who are no longer coaching in the league.

"It really has no bearing on pretty much anything. It is all about winning championships, winning basketball games."

Lemanis insisted the snub would not provide his side with any extra motivation for tomorrow night's crucial opening playoff match against Perth at the North Shore Events Centre.

"I don't think you need any extra motivation in the playoffs," he said. "This is why we play the sport. We'll come out fired up to try to win the championship, not to prove points to anybody else.

"Individual awards don't really count. When you look back at your career, you always remember championships more than anything else."

Penney, who incredibly wasn't even among the top four vote-getters for the MVP, shrugged it off with two words. "No dramas," he said.

He did, however, have sympathy for a coach who has copped plenty of criticism given his team's standing.

"[Lemanis] has done a wonderful job this year," Penney said. "We are 22-6. It is a tough one, but you move on.

"There is nothing you can do about it. What is the point? Within our group we know what Drej has done and, regardless of any outside comments, it has been a lot of fun playing for him.

"We have got points to prove as it is. It is a big challenge for us being a New Zealand team trying to win an Australian competition."

For American Braswell the awards - or lack of them for his colleagues - provided a crash course in the sometimes bitter nature of the transtasman rivalry.

"I am understanding it more and more," Braswell said. "When my coach doesn't get coach of the year and he is 22-6, Kirk doesn't get the MVP when he has the same number [of points per game] as Gary Ervin but is on a winning team - I am understanding it more and more."

Braswell didn't quite toe the party line when it came to not using the snub as motivation, saying he was looking forward to proving a point against Perth's much-vaunted guard line.

Asked whether he expected to be pushed around tomorrow night, he said: "It will never happen. They say Damien Martin is the best defender in the league and all of this stuff. Blah blah blah. I thought Mika Vukona should have won defensive player of the year. He is a guy who goes out there and gets 16, 18 rebounds a game and dives for every loose ball.

"For me, the chance to attack the Perth guards this series ... it will happen."

Asked if he backed a Breakers guard line of himself, Penney and CJ Bruton against Martin, Brad Robbins and Kevin Lisch, he said: "All day. We are 22-6.

"But it is going to be a scrap. They have been sending two Australian referees to referee our games for the last two months. Everybody across the water is against us. We need everybody here to be with us. That's all we are asking."