The New Zealand Breakers have produced a fourth
comfortable win in a row, humbling the Sydney Kings 93-64 in Auckland to
move to outright first in the NBL.
Before the biggest crowd to
watch a basketball match in New Zealand, the defending champions fell
behind briefly in the second quarter.
But that merely sparked the
Breakers into a big five minutes before halftime when they turned a
23-28 deficit into a decisive 45-34 lead, and from there the Kings never
really threatened.
All 7979 tickets at Vector Arena were snapped up, making the attendance also the biggest for any NBL match this season.
Victory
gave the Breakers, who had started the night ahead of second-placed
Perth on points percentage, a 3-0 season sweep over the Kings.
It
also took their win-loss record to 14-5, which the Wildcats could match
against the Townsville on Saturday, ahead of the meeting of the league's
top two teams in Auckland next Thursday.
Since dropping two
matches at the end of December, the Breakers have been unbeaten in 2012,
with 14 points the closest margin in their four outings of the New
Year.
"It was good fun playing in front of that many people," admitted Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis.
"We're glad we could give them a game they could enjoy and go home happy.
"But
I thought we were in and out of the game. There were times we showed
some Breaker basketball and played well defensively, but other times we
were a little all over the place."
Sydney coach Ian Robilliard said his men made a couple of bad turnovers and bad shot selections that just swung the momentum.
"For us, it was very disappointing to play like that after a month where we've played well."
Julian Khazzouh ended up as the game's top scorer with 20 points for the Kings.
The Breakers had three scorers in double figures in Gary Wilkinson (18), Tom Abercrombie (16) and Cedric Jackson (10).
NZN