Assistant Mody Maor to oversee Breakers opener

The Sky Sport New Zealand Breakers will open their NBL22 campaign without head coach Dan Shamir on the sidelines as he continues his recovery after testing positive for COVID-19.

Assistant Coach Mody Maor will lead the Breakers in their first action against the South East Melbourne Phoenix on Saturday night.

Shamir was one of Breakers travel party who tested positive last week resulting in the cancellation of their final Blitz game.

Maor is hoping he won't let Shamir down in his first time taking the reigns.

"I love this team, I love this Club and I care about Dan a lot, and I don't want to let him down. I want him to feel that he has the time and space to get better and come back and that the team is here to support him," Moar said.

With majority of the team back on the training court in Melbourne, Maor also provided an update on where the team was at with their preparations for Saturday.

"We've had COVID run through our team a little bit. We're happy that the people that were sick are starting to feel better, starting to live symptom free, starting to come out of isolation,"

"The part of the team that was not sick and was healthy once we were able to prove we were good with our negative tests, we went into training to prepare for the game."

"We were all quarantined for a few days so we lost a bit of our fitness and a bit of our game shape. We also missed a preseason game that was very important for us in a troubled preseason already but we have a great group of guys who came in and did the work and we feel confident coming into the game."

The Breakers open up their season on the road against the South East Melbourne Phoenix on Saturday, December 4 at 10:00 pm.  The game will be broadcast live on Sky Sport.