{"id":158226,"date":"2025-09-21T06:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T06:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/158226\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T06:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T06:17:11","slug":"koponen-wants-spark-after-slow-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/158226\/","title":{"rendered":"Koponen wants spark after slow start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New Zealand Breakers head coach Petteri Koponen was frank in his team\u2019s assessment during <a href=\"https:\/\/nbl.com.au\/news\/brisbane-bullets-imports-shine-nbl26-opening-win\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Friday\u2019s 104-95 season-opening loss to Brisbane<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>During Friday\u2019s post-game press conference, the Finnish mentor said he was disappointed to produce a performance like that in the Breakers&#8217; Hungry Jack\u2019s NBL26 home-opener.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t play well and couldn\u2019t find our rhythm at all, not helped by the fact we didn\u2019t shoot the ball well,\u201d Koponen said, among praising the play of athletic forward Carlin Davison in the defeat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe biggest issue was on defence, conceding 104 points is not good enough, and we simply didn\u2019t have the effort and made too many mistakes on that end of the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring the pre-season, we talked about being that team that made others uncomfortable, but we didn\u2019t bring the energy enough to sustain that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>As is the beauty of the NBL, the Breakers, who recently won their first-ever CODE Sports NBL Blitz trophy, will have the chance to make amends and secure their first victory of the campaign when they travel to John Cain Arena on Sunday, to face Melbourne United.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[On Sunday] it\u2019s important we take care of the ball and make some more shots than we did on Friday,\u201d Koponen continued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMelbourne was very good during the pre-season and we know how they like to play, having five solid defensive players on the court at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an aspect we\u2019re trying to instil, but we\u2019re not quite there yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a challenge, but if we recover, both physically and mentally, and come with an attitude ready to fight, we\u2019ll give ourselves a chance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOverall though, we\u2019re getting better, step-by-step and building that chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s fixture, which will see <a href=\"https:\/\/nbl.com.au\/news\/done-breakers-star-to-miss-united-clash\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Breakers be without big man Sam Mennenga due to concussion protocols<\/a>, tips off at 2.30pm AEST via ESPN and Channel 10.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/68b6a2875d98c926a0d5fa93_espn.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand Breakers head coach Petteri Koponen was frank in his team\u2019s assessment during Friday\u2019s 104-95 season-opening loss&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-158226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}