Despite contributing arguably his most influential performance for the New Zealand Breakers in two seasons Tony 'The Bear' Ronaldson is refusing to get carried away after last night's upset win 120-111 over the Melbourne Tigers.
The vastly experienced Ronaldson put in a hugely influential 23-point performance for his adopted New Zealand team on Thursday night at the North Shore Events Centre scoring with phenomenally accurate field shooting.
The big evergreen forward shot 8/10 from inside the arc, a perfect 4/4 outside, slotted 3/4 free throws, dragged down four boards and threw in six assists for good measure. Not a bad night's work by anyone's estimation and in the process he passed 9500 NBL points – a milestone he quickly played down as a 'bookend at the end of the day' and 'something to reflect on when he retires.'
Ronaldson has earned the mantle of the ultimate team player over his 20-season career. And it's that 'we are bigger than I' attitude that comes to the fore even after a clinically influential performance.
"Yeah as far as points production goes and efficiency yeah it was ... (good) but there's been other games like the final in cairns last year when I didn't necessarily score 23 points but I played well within the team structure and helped us win quite convincingly. But within a purely points production point of view it was right up there I guess," Ronaldson said rather reluctantly.
The Bear has had no trouble settling into the tight-knit Breakers unit since arriving in 2007 and it's clear that even after two NBL Championships and a Commonwealth Games gold medal his competitive fire isn't dimmed in the slightest.
He coolly nailed two crucial three pointers for the Breakers midway in the fourth quarter on Thursday night, at a time when the number one go-to man Kirk Penney was suffering a rare case of cold shooting hands. But as far as Ronaldson is concerned, the winning fourth quarter surge was all down to defensive excellence.
"We had patches of brilliant stuff in that first half, the second half was a lot better once again, (like last week) which was a promising sign, and we didn't have as many lulls as we did last week but the key was our defence. When our defence is strong our offence is so much better and we generate so many more easy baskets and get stops on top of that and make them take the contested jump shots – that's what we aim to do," Ronaldson said.
But when queried about his teams’ outstanding long range shooting depth (the Breakers out-bombed Melbourne 20/37 to 6/22.) Ronaldson is prepared to take a slightly brasher tone.
"If you look at our personnel we're a pretty good shooting team, you've got Oscar (Forman), CJ (Bruton) and Kirk (Penney) as your one, two and three man and they're probably three of the best three point shooters in the league. Then you've got Phil Jones coming off the bench as well: it's one of our strengths. But the beauty is we can change it up as well, we don't have to rely on that threat. We have a good inside presence as well, which we didn't need as much tonight, but that's definitely another threat that we think that we're pretty good at too," he said.
So just 20 minutes