{"id":460078,"date":"2026-02-05T12:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T12:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/460078\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T12:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T12:57:14","slug":"rising-next-star-to-miss-phoenix-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/460078\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Next Star to miss Phoenix clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New Zealand Breakers have announced that their NBL Next Star Karim Lopez will miss Thursday\u2019s Round 20 clash with South East Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>The Mexican 18-year-old, who scored a career-high 32 points last round against Melbourne, is sidelined due to a lower leg issue.<\/p>\n<p>Following a recent medical assessment, the Breakers said they are \u201ctaking a cautious approach to prioritise his long-term health and welfare\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez joins Sam Mennenga (wrist), Rob Baker II (knee) and Izayah Le\u2019Afa (foot) on the sidelines for Petteri Koponen\u2019s side.<\/p>\n<p>The Round 20 fixture at Spark Arena tips off at 5.30pm AEDT, live on ESPN.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/696810544c3525aaec836c13_Disney+_1920x250_V1.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Zealand Breakers have announced that their NBL Next Star Karim Lopez will miss Thursday\u2019s Round 20&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-460078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460078","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=460078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}