KEY POINTS:
Brisbane's loss has been well and truly the Breakers' gain, with the New Zealand ANBL team snapping up three players from the failing Queensland basketball club.
Adam Tanner, a 2.01m forward, joined Boomers star CJ Bruton and former Tall Black Dillon Boucher as the Bullets scooped up by the Breakers when they confirmed their 2008/09 roster yesterday.
High-energy American centre Rick Rickert was named as the lone import, subject to a physical on the back injury that sidelined him mid-way through last season.
Tanner, a 23-year-old Melbourne native who has just completed four years of college ball in the United States, was the tenth and final player named on the roster.
Coach Andrej Lemanis, who yesterday headed to Austria to get married, said Tanner would initially start at the far end of the bench behind established bigs Rickert, Tony Ronaldson and Tim Behrendorff.
Tanner had been on the Breakers' radar earlier in the year but signed a contract with Brisbane before owner Eddy Groves announced his intention to sell the club.
The Bullets subsequently released all of their players and Groves is still looking for a buyer to take over the club's ANBL licence.
With fellow league heavyweight Sydney Kings already having gone to the wall, there will be just 11 teams contesting this season's title barring an 11th-hour reprieve for the Bullets.
The demise of two foundation clubs has led to suggestions across the Tasman the league might be on the point of collapse but Lemanis doesn't believe there is any prospect of that happening.
"The league is bigger than any one club so the league will certainly go on," Lemanis said.
"I've been around it for a while and it seems to go through these cycles but it keeps going."
With a strong ownership and management structure and crowd numbers improving on the back of the club's first playoff run, the Breakers were certainly on a solid footing, Lemanis said.
"We want to build on what we did last year when we laid a nice foundation."
Rickert made a big impact last season before succumbing to a bulging disk in his back.
It has been a long, painful road back for the Minnesota forward but he said he was now ready to get down to some unfinished business.
"I absolutely loved my time in Auckland last season and was just so gutted that the injury happened when it did and kept me from being part of what was a great season. I feel I owe this club something - the players, the people involved, the fans. I'm coming back to make good on that."
Rickert will arrive in New Zealand shortly before pre-season training on July 24 for a three-day series of workouts and medical tests. He had no doubts the physical would be a formality.
* Breakers
CJ Bruton
Paul Henare
Kirk Penney
Phill Jones
Oscar Forman
Dillon Boucher
Tony Ronaldson
Adam Tanner
Rick Rickert
Tim Behrendorff
