Breakers stars on heavy restriction

Will McDowell-White and Zylan Cheatham will both be on New Zealand’s active roster for the first time since Round 5 when the Breakers take on the Kings tonight, but head coach Mody Maor has warned the pair will be “heavily restricted” in the Championship Series re-match.

Cheatham made his return to the active roster from a foot injury last week but did not take to the floor in the Breakers’ big win over Cairns, while McDowell-White was cleared to play earlier this week following a leg injury.

The star pair has only suited up together for three of New Zealand’s 14 NBL24 games so far this season following McDowell-White’s hand injury to open the season.

“They’re heavily restricted. The nature of the injuries both of them had limited what they could do when they were hurt so there’s the process of putting the injury behind you – which they have – and then there’s the process of getting into basketball shape and conditioning and being able to withstand the load of what a basketball game is,” Maor said.

“We don’t force people to play and we want them to play when they feel 100 per cent ready. Part of being ready is getting a few practices under your belt, so every day we practice it becomes closer and closer. We’ll see.

“They’re not here to save anything. They’re good basketball players who have been out for a significant amount of time, I think their role within the team and the things they each uniquely do are very clear to anyone who watches us play.

“They’re going to need to fit into how we do things and they’re going to need to get into basketball shape too.”

The return of the key pair has been soured by the news Finn Delany is expected to miss a period of time with a calf injury. New Zealand has not released a timeframe on the forward’s return, but ESPN’s Olgun Uluc has reported Delany will be absent for 4-6 weeks.

The Breakers registered their biggest win of the season in the Round 11 defeat of Cairns, and McDowell-White says the side’s apparent turnaround has been player driven.

“We’ve set out own goals as a playing group and if we just stick to those – which we did in the game against Cairns – watching it you can tell the difference,” McDowell-White said.

“Against Cairns it showed we turned a corner and that probably wasn’t the coaches doing, it was really us. We got together over a couple of days and sort of put some things out that we needs to get done.

“Just the fluidity we’ve been playing with lately has been good to watch, and not just Cairns, even the game we lost to South East was really good.

“As long as we don’t waver from that we’ll be all good.”

New Zealand’s clash with Sydney tips off tonight at 5:30pm AEDT, live on ESPN via Kayo and Sky Sport in NZ.