No Breaker reinforcements

Mody Maor and the New Zealand Breakers will not bring in injury replacements for Will McDowell-White or Zylan Cheatham as reported by Stuff.co.nz on Monday, with the publication stating the head coach “did not wish to discuss the club’s reasoning” behind the decision.

Both Cheatham (broken foot) and McDowell-White (fractured fibula) have been penciled in for Round 12 returns by the club. Cheatham has been out of action since the Round 5 defeat to Adelaide, while McDowell-White suffered his injury during the Round 8 win over Tasmania.

“The urgent matter over this last week was to figure out and implement how we play without Will,” Maor told Stuff.

“We had a week to implement a few different concepts in how we want to play – especially offensively – and hopefully this will be something we do well and will help us catch a rhythm, play together and play connected.

“Our defence has been getting better steadily but we still have a way to go.

“When we lost ‘Z’ we needed to change some stuff, and that took us a week or so to figure things out.

“We’ve been slowly but surely trending towards the upper end of the league over the last 3-4 games.”

The Breakers, like the rest of the NBL, experienced a fixtureless weekend due to last week’s mid-season break, but will be one of the first teams to return to the court in Round 9 when they play Adelaide on Thursday night.

After the week on the training court, Maor is backing the club culture he has helped cultivate during his time in New Zealand to help the side turn its fortunes around.

“When you want to establish a culture with a club these things get tested, and they only matter if they stand during the tough times,” he said.

“Everybody wants to thing they have a culture, but then when you get punched in the face, if everything goes out the window you have nothing.

“We have a group of players who care, we don’t use the circumstances as an excuse and we need to go out there and win games.

“This is definitely a game we need to win.”

New Zealand will host Adelaide at Wolfbrook Arena on Thursday November 30 at 5:30pm AEDT, live on ESPN via Kayo, and Sky Sport in NZ.