Breakers win big over Taipans to celebrate Tom Abercrombie’s 400th NBL game

NBL: At Spark Arena, Auckland. NZ Breakers 98 (Parker Jackson Cartwright 25, Finn Delany 18, Zylan Cheatham 11). Cairns Taipans 87 (Sam Mennenga 17, Patrick Miller 15, Sam Waardenburg 12 ). 1Q: 22-25; HT: 46-43; 3Q: 77-59.

The Breakers have won their season opener for the first time since 2016 and acknowledged Tom Abercrombie’s 400th game in the best way possible.

The Breakers defeated the Cairns Taipans 98-87 at Spark Arena to get their NBL campaign off to an impressive start that justifies the predictions that they’ll be one of the teams to beat this season.

But this wasn’t an ordinary season opener, it was Abercrombie’s milestone game and also the beginning of his 16th season at the club.

When he does finally decide to hang up his boots, it won’t be long afterwards that his No 10 jersey is retired, but he showed in this game that there’s plenty more great basketball left in the 36-year-old.

When the players were introduced on court, the biggest cheer from the 7000 crowd at Spark Arena, which included Warriors captain Tohu Harris, was saved for him and he was also presented with a gift from Breakers CEO Lisa Edser, then he gave a brief speech thanking everyone.

Abercrombie joined the returning Finn Delany and the three US imports, Parker Jackson Cartwright, Justinian Jessup and Zylan Cheatham, as the starters for this game.

There couldn’t have been a better way for the game to begin than the slam dunk from Abercrombie, no doubt a play that was drawn up specially for him by Breakers coach Mody Maor.

But after that momentous start the game got into a grind and it was the Taipans who started the brightest, benefiting from some sloppy play by the Breakers.

However, Jessup’s big three-pointer with 4.42 to go in the opening quarter put the Breakers up 14-12, but at the end of that period the Taipans held a 25-22 lead.

At half-time, the Breakers were up 46-43, despite the Taipans’ ability to get to the paint, while the Breakers were having to shoot from further out.

It was the third quarter where the Breakers made their move with Cheatham and Jackson-Cartwright landing huge three-pointers, while Delany was also having an outstanding return and with 4.34 in the quarter to go, they were up 64-53.

That blew out to 77-61 by the time of the final break and with that sort of lead, the Breakers just needed to play solid over the final 10 minutes, something they did comfortably.

All this was done without the Breakers’ impactful Will McDowell-White because of a hand issue and their Lithuanian Next Star Mantas Rubštavičius due to a torn groin.

When the Breakers are at full strength, who knows how high the ceiling is for this team?