All to Play for at Spark Tomorrow Night

The New Zealand Breakers made a change to their starting line-up in Friday night’s Championship Series clash with the Sydney Kings – and to great effect. The insertion of an extra ball handler into the starting group helped free up Will McDowell-White to have a strong first half performance.

That’s about where the good times ended for the Breakers though. After a pair of Barry Brown Jr threes to send them into the halftime break with a slender lead, the Kings defence locked in on New Zealand and restricted them to just 21 points in the entire second half.

With the victory the Kings have now taken a 2-1 series lead heading into Sunday’s game at Spark Arena. Should Sydney earn the victory in enemy territory, it will be named champions for the second straight season.

While that Le’Afa addition to the starting line-up paid initial dividends, NBL analyst Liam Santamaria believes the Breakers could need another tactical shake-up to force a Game 5.

“They’ve got to come out all guns blazing,” Santamaria said on NBL Today. “They are really having trouble offensively against this Sydney defence in this series.

“They need to come in with a reckless abandon and just let that thing fly with confidence. The Kings are packing the paint and taking everything away at the rim.

“You look at a guy like Jarrell Brantley, he shot 54 per cent on two-point attempts over the course of the regular season, he’s at about 30 per cent on those this Championship Series because the length of the Kings around the rim is really giving him trouble, and Dererk Pardon is barely getting anything around the cup – so they’re not getting anything easy.

“They’re going to have to come and shoot that thing from long range with absolute confidence and see if they can get that going. Guys like Tom Abercrombie, Rayan Rupert, Will McDowell-White, Izayah Le’Afa, Jarrell Brantley, they need everybody stepping in and knocking down shots.”

That aforementioned pair of Barry Brown Jr threes to close out the first half looked like it could have been the start of a defining period of the game.

Then, the halftime buzzer sounded.

The Breakers failed to score the same amount of points in the second half as they did in either of the first two quarters, and went on a horrific run of making zero of 18 field goal attempts.

“I thought maybe they might have started Barry Brown Jr at the beginning of the second half,” Santamaria reflected.

“Halftime came at a bad time for the Breakers last night – Barry Brown Jr had just gone bang bang and had knocked down a couple of threes and was feeling good. I thought the mood might have been to say ‘hey Barry, stay out there to begin this second half because you’re hot, and let’s keep riding that hot hand’.

“That didn’t happen, he cooled off and the team cooled off. They’ll be thinking about it and looking at different ways to bring about some offensive punch.

“Starting Barry Brown Jr might definitely be something they’ll be considering heading into tomorrow.”

After the Kings set a new NBL-record crowd of over 18,000 people last night, the Breakers are set to break the record crowd at Spark Arena after adding extra seats to the venue to accommodate the high demand for tickets.

You can catch the Game 4 action live on Sky Sport and Prime tomorrow night from 6pm.