Three rounds in to NBL21 and there are already a few teams licking their wounds. The Cairns Taipans and the New Zealand Breakers are two of these teams.
They will be both be undergoing a prompt and rapid root-cause analysis of their individual short comings.
This will be heavily focused on getting their squads back on track. The Cairns Taipans on again/off again defence will be front and centre, for New Zealand maybe a sneaky conditioning session for Lamar Patterson is in order?
Why are these two teams in particular struggling?
New Zealand Breakers
Record 0-2
Ranked 9th on Offense
Ranked 5th on Defence
Favourites, Stacked, Unstoppable...
Just a few words that were used to describe the Breakers as they were on a tangent of big player signings this last off season.
Oh how a few games can change things...
It's going to be a tough season for the Breakers as they have been presented with a less than beneficial schedule.
Essentially they've been uprooted and moved to Australia with no home game in sight.
Not the ideal situation for a bunch of athletes with young families at home.
However, there remains a job at hand: winning basketball games. In two clashes against Adelaide, the breakers have been less than impressive as they've dropped both games to the team touted as being the least likely to make a splash in the NBL.
It's certainly a much too small of a sample size to be writing these guys off, but there are some points of concern.
Lamar Patterson has looked... Bad?
The All-NBL 1st teamer from last season has had a Harden-esque start to the season, and not the 35+ points per game, dime dropping, step backing Harden being referenced.
Patterson has look unprepared, out of shape and relatively complacent compared to most professional athletes.
The saying goes "Hard work beats talent, when talent fails to work hard"
Right now, guys like Isaac Humphries, Tai Webster, John Mooney and your usual suspects like Cotton, Creek, Sobey and *insert any Melbourne United player here except Hopson* have came out and produced some massive stat lines.
Is Lamar Patterson not more or equally as talented as these guys? Of course he is, but the effort and work ethic isn't there right now, and for New Zealand's finals hopes it better appear quickly.
Another interesting part of this basketball equation is Colton Iverson's translation into the NBL. A few more games and data points are required to dive deeper into this one however.
The Cairns Taipans
Record 1-5
Ranked 7th on Offense
Ranked 9th on Defence
Losing a top 3 player on the team, who was the defensive player of the year, will hurt a teams ability to win games and play defence.
Replacing said top 3 player on a team, who was the defensive player of the year with an unproven 18 year old perimeter wing will hurt the teams ability to win games and play defense.
However a team boasting a dynamic one-two punch as potent as Machado & Oliver should surely be sitting prettier than 1-5, with those six games including a handful at home.
The problems for this team have atleast been obvious enough to be analysed and hopefully corrected. Cairns have been terrible in transition, slack on defence and a little bit too eager to take the outside shot.
Individually a few players are slipping, most notably the NBA hopeful Koute Noi who is currently sitting at a -14 net rating while being on the court for 75% of possessions, not ideal for the Taipans. Noi also unfortunately has the teams second worst Opp eFG% with opponents shooting 10%, better while he is in the court, only eclipsed by Nathan Jawai who sits at +12.9 Opp eFG%.
Two teams with incredibly different problems.
One team has had a large sample size of disappointment. Conditioning level has been the talking point for the other.
In this fast approaching matchup one team will give themselves a breath of relief, the losing team will be further exposed to criticism and re-evaluation.
Thank you for reading.
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