Basketball: Ibekwe wins place on club wall of fame

Ekene Ibekwe takes the last-second shot that brought victory for the Breakers. Photo / Getty Images

First-year import’s buzzer-beating shot clinches championship for the Breakers.

Walking into the Breakers' practice gym every day this season, Ekene Ibekwe was struck by one thing.

"There were all these big pictures of the previous championships," he said.

"I wanted to get my picture up there, so what better way to do it than making a last-second shot for the championship?"

What better way indeed. Ibekwe yesterday made perhaps the biggest shot in the 13-year history of the Breakers, draining a buzzer-beating jump shot to guarantee immortality on the walls of the Kiwi club's Atlas Place facilities in Mairangi Bay.

He appeared an unlikely hero - especially with players like Cedric Jackson and Corey Webster on the court - but the first-year import's heroics were exactly the way the Breakers drew it up. Well, almost.

"It was originally supposed to be for me to go towards the basket, but I just felt comfortable stopping and popping," Ibekwe said.

"I make that shot nine times out of 10. I shot it and it went in."

Simple. But it was simplicity that came months in the making, with the play drawn up last year by assistant coach Judd Flavell, finely honed through hours of repetition at training, before being selected by coach Dean Vickerman in the most pressurised of environments.

"We were pretty composed and it was like, 'all right, let's go to something we've used in practice in this kind of situation'," Vickerman said.

"A lot of people would have thought that we would have gone in a different direction, but having Corey as one of the main guys can be a bit of a decoy. It was just a fantastic shot."

Ibekwe, playing for his 11th club in a ninth country in an eight-year professional career, confirmed it was the best shot he's ever made, especially since, along with a title, it earned an additional reward.

"For a championship? There's no bigger shot than that," he said.

"When it first happened I couldn't even speak. I was just overwhelmed.

"I'm just happy that it went in and we didn't have to take that long flight back to Australia [for game three]."