Basketball: Viva Los Breakers

Paul Henare shows the spirit coach Andrej Lemanis is looking for from the Breakers this season. Sandra Mu / Getty Images

Don't be surprised if the Breakers are fed a regular diet of Spain's world championship success as they shake down for the pre-season Blitz tournament at Coffs Harbour.

The New Zealand franchise will warm up for their fourth season in the Australian NBL with back-to-back games tonight against Cairns and Sydney and a showdown tomorrow against Townsville, after which results will dictate the draw.

Coach Andrej Lemanis, in his second year with the club, reiterated last night his desire for a selfless and team-oriented style of play and said the players could do worse than absorb the lessons taught by Spain at the recent world championships.

"To me, the way the Spanish played in the world championships was a beautiful thing," Lemanis said. "It was total team basketball - an absolute commitment to defence and near perfect offence in terms of spacing, ball movement, and being unselfish. It was picture-perfect, text-book basketball - something you could only admire."

Lemanis has already made much of the need to adhere to similar principles within the Breakers' operation, insisting he would recruit only players prepared to put the team ahead of individual goals.

He said if he had to single out the one principle on which his coaching philosophy was based, it was the concept of complete basketball, much like the total football doctrine made famous by the Dutch in the 1970s.

"You need a group of guys who are prepared to sacrifice themselves as individuals for the good of the whole. We've talked a lot about buying into the team philosophy, and that's probably the fundamental principle that I build a team from."

Lemanis warned Breakers fans not to expect too much from the much-altered line-up during the Blitz tournament, saying pre-season was all about the players developing combinations, getting used to the playbook and learning as much as possible.

He said his main duty was to ensure the team were in the best possible shape for the opening NBL game against Hobart on September 26.

"We can afford to think like this because, come September 26, we're still going to be 0 and 0," he said.

"While you always want to win, right now it's all about getting the offence and defence running smoothly, and that sometimes means sacrificing opportunities and putting the process ahead of everything else."

The usual experience at pre-season tournaments, he said, was one of experimentation and trial and error, as teams looked to find out as much as possible about themselves in the shortest possible time.

"There's a lot of learning in these pre-season games and that's just how it is," said Lemanis. "Offensively, I expect that at times we'll look out of sync, and defensively there'll be times when are late on our rotation. There'll be confusion, there'll be misunderstandings, but that's what the pre-season is all about: developing combination and understanding."

But he sounded an optimistic note when it came to his gut feeling about the Breakers' chances this year.

"The feeling in the group is that, definitely, we should be able to make the play-offs for the first time.

"We feel very confident. The people who have been here since day one feel the best they've ever felt about the team."

One of the issues still to be confirmed is the Breakers' likely starting five, which Lemanis said would be changed frequently during the upcoming scrimmages so he could gauge the effectiveness of different players.

While he had a reasonable idea of his probable starting five, the pre-season tournament was likely to offer up some more information and he was determined to keep an open mind until after that.


Now, where do i stand again?

If you think the All Black lineout looks complicated, you should see the playbook for an NBL team.

So many and varied are the different moves and strategies, they usually take up the best part of an A4 exercise book, and are expected to be memorised and understood by all players in the team.

Take the Breakers. Coach Andrej Lemanis estimates there would be in excess of 100 variations on offensive or defensive strategies, and says it's the biggest problem when it comes to integrating new players.

"There is a lot to take in, actually," he says. "There's our secondary offence, which has five variations. Our motion offence has four possible entries and two variables, we have 14 set-plays, there's about three side out-of-bounds plays, three end out-of-bounds plays, and then there's our zone - and all of our defensive rules and rotations."

He says most players have a generic idea of most of the plays and have to make only small adjustments to fit in with new teams but it definitely takes some getting used to.

"You have to be careful as a coach to make sure that you're not expecting too much of your players, and you introduce only the basic framework first, so they can all absorb it.

"Without a doubt, its the main reason why teams get better as the season wears on."