Basketball: Chance for Breakers to hit top gear

Paul Henare. Photo / Natalie Slade

It's a pre-season game 27 games into the regular season and a celebration of the end of a career that hasn't quite ended yet.

More importantly, tonight's final regular season home match against the lowly Adelaide 36ers is a chance for the Breakers to display some semblance of form that might suggest they will be a genuine title threat in the coming play-offs.

Coach Andrej Lemanis declared his side was embarking on a second pre-season after a muddled victory over Sydney that secured top seeding for the 20-6 Breakers. The heavy insinuation was that the result tonight - and in Saturday's final regular season match away to Melbourne - doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters to Lemanis is his side being physically and mentally primed for the semifinals series against either Perth or Cairns that begins in Auckland in eight days.

However, given tonight's match has also been earmarked as foundation player Paul Henare's farewell, it's hard to imagine the Breakers will be content with another of the scratchy performances they have consistently dished up over the last two months.

The only player to have represented the Breakers every season since their inception, Henare has played in 242 of the club's 249 games.

The club has two more originals on the books, but Dillon Boucher and Mika Vukona have played for other clubs in the interim. When Henare hangs up his boots to become the Bay Hawks' head coach at the end of the season, the unbroken line to the original squad of 2003-04 will be broken.

Though he will still play at least one more match at the North Shore Events Centre, such is the way of these things, the club has chosen to honour Henare now rather than during the finals.

"To be honest I wasn't really expecting any sort of celebration," Henare said. "But the way it has worked out with us securing first spot early I think it is pretty cool. I'm very grateful the club has decided to do this for me. I'm pretty stoked but I wasn't expecting too much of a fuss to be made."

Tributes for the gritty point guard have poured in from teammates and management. "Pauli is the Breakers," Vukona said. "It will seem pretty empty without him."

Lemanis, who has opted to start Henare for much of this season but then bench him in favour of import Kevin Braswell late on when the game is on the line, paid tribute to Henare's selflessness.

"He is the ultimate team guy, sacrificing for the good of the group and always giving his best for the team," Lemanis said.

That Henare's final regular season home match comes with the club in an untouchable position atop the NBL ladder, against a once-powerful opponent from a rabid basketball town that has fallen on hard times, is a sign of the progression the club has made during his tenure.

Not so long ago, it would have been the Breakers being used as tune-up fodder for a playoff-bound opponent.

"It's much better being at this end of the table than the other end," Henare said. "I've had my fair share of those memories and I'm glad those years are behind us."

Whether Henare will go out on the ultimate high note with a championship to his name remains to be seen. The evidence of the last couple of months suggests the Breakers may struggle in the playoffs. But the evidence of the last couple of weeks, Henare said, suggested they would be fine.

"I have no doubt we will be ready and we will be rolling," he said. "I see an edge in us again. I am confident we will be able to step up when we need to."

THE GAME
Breakers v Adelaide
North Shore Events Centre, 7.30 tonight