Basketball: Coaching hybrids on track | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

In basketball parlance, you could safely say Paul Henare and Pero Cameron are branches of the same ancestral totara.

Standing proud like the native conifer, the coaches are sparse in number, have an air of durability about them and their thick and stringy hide ensure they are impervious to emotions that often cloud one's judgment.

The hybrids - Henare at the helm of the HBS Bank Hawks and Cameron assuming that mantle for the Wellington Saints - will tonight be towering figures over their respective teams to decide who will prevail on the top of the Bartercard National Basketball League (NBL) ladder.

"Paulie's now part of that production line to pass on skills to the younger players in Hawke's Bay," former Tall Black skipper Cameron said yesterday before today's 7pm tip-off at the TSB Bank Arena in Wellington.

Just as the timber from the totara was used in the yesteryear for railway sleepers, wharf and house piles, and telegraph poles, Henare and Cameron have followed a revered pathway from playing at an elite level to putting their hands up in the hope of carving a niche in the coaching realm.

While Cameron made a meteoric rise to becoming a champion coach with the Saints in the NBL in his rookie season last year and will need to dispel any connotations of a beginner's luck, it's early days for Henare who is equally mindful the basketball brigade have similar lofty expectations of him in his rookie 2011 season after a stellar career with the New Zealand Breakers in the Australian National Basketball League (ANBL).

As Cameron pointed out, Basketball New Zealand's pathway for players to become coaches is a clearly defined track with the likes of Kenny Stone, Michael Fitchett, Tony Rampton and Chris Tupu, to name a few, having successfully trodden on that route.

"I understand Dillon Boucher is about to go that way too," Cameron said.

The Hawks and the Saints have lost their innocence with a defeat each as they occupy the top two rungs of the NBL ladder, although the Wellingtonians have played one more game.

A resurgent Nelson Giants burst the Saints' bubble first a fortnight ago before the Manawatu Jets left the Hawks licking their wounds in Napier last Friday night.

Putting it down to an "awful performance", Henare said it wasn't due to his troops' inability to execute the game plan or for that matter the Jets outplaying them.

It seems it boiled down to more an issue of desire and something the ANBL title-winning Breakers captain reckons can be easily fixed.

If anything, for Henare it's a blessing because nothing makes a team recoil faster than a defeat that becomes the launching pad for a clash against heavyweights such as Wellington first up, and then the Giants in at the Trafalgar Centre tomorrow at 7pm.

Despite stumbling to Manawatu, Henare doesn't buy into statistics of who has won at a venue or any bogey team theories.

"That's how I played at the Breakers. On the night you have to be ready to play no matter who it is or where," he said, citing the Breakers' victory away over the Perth Wildcats in the ANBL after eight unsuccessful attempts as a classic example.

"We never talked about it before any games because we just go and win," he reveals.

While they were of a similar ilk, Henare felt he and Cameron won't be able to do much once the players take to the court but pointed out his rival coach and ex-Tall Black captain's demeanour in coaching was similar to his playing one.

"He didn't take any crap from anyone, no matter who they were.

"If you muck up, he'll go for you because he has no friends.

"If you stuff up, you're told. I suppose I'm like that too," Henare said.

Cameron, who worked up steam like a whistling electric kettle on the sideline and often took half an hour to calm down before fronting up for interviews last season, was passionate and loved his basketball, Henare said - again of the view that he himself needed to cultivate the art of keeping his emotions in check too.

"Pero's a born winner and he tends to react if things get stroppy."

Cameron said tonight's game was "very big" and an opportune time for both sides to gauge each other's temperaments.

"We both have very good statistics but we need to iron out a lot of cracks," he said, although emphasising a defeat was not the be-all-and-end-all for the season with several games yet to be played.

However, the psychological edge or dent from this game could have a bearing on how the sides fare in the play-offs.

"Paulie's a tremendous leader who took the Breakers to a historic title win and he's been doing that for years with the Tall Blacks too," said Cameron, adding they were both from a tough basketball era in the country.

The current crop of elite NBL players had made some significant changes to how the game is played, and what they brought to the court each week was crucial in chiselling the future of the code and its impact on the professional and international arena.

"We have been the Oceania champions for two years now, beating the Australians too, and we're also the ANBL champions," Cameron said, adding bar the two imports and CJ Bruton, the remaining Breakers players plied their trade in the NBL.

"That, I believe, is the product of the NBL which has a toughness and hardness about it," he said, excited by the prospect of watching young Saints shooting guard Corey Webster "doing some outrageous stuff" for the fans in the capital city, who have been packing up at the arena this season.

The Saints have three third-place getters in the NBL leaders statistics - Webster nailing 51.7 per cent of shots from outside the arc, import centre Kareem Johnson registering 61.5 per cent in field goals and point guard Lindsay Tait averaging 5.7 assists.

Former Hawk Johnson was part of the team that won the NBL title in 2006 under Australian coach Shawn Dennis.

Conversely, the Hawks do not have a single player featuring on the glory board of individualism and that suits Henare just fine.

For the record, none of the Bay players bask in the limelight of top-10 player power rankings either.

"We put our stats on the board and our strength is in our numbers and we play as a team," Henare said, adding Hawks American import, versatile guard/small forward Josh Pace, was the best around in the NBL and Bay-born veteran guard Paora Winitana "has been there and done that".

In the talent stakes, he felt the Hawks, Saints and perhaps the Waikato Pistons were in the mix to make a statement this season.

Wellington, he said, were the best rebounding and offensive team while the Hawks were "reasonably solid" on rebounding but airtight on defence.

The team that imposes itself early in the game would have the advantage tonight.

Looking at tomorrow night, Henare didn't mind playing back-to-back games against tough opponents before hosting the Otago Nuggets at the Pettigrew-Green Arena at 2pm on Monday.

Playing double headers were inevitable in the NBL and the Hawks would have to come to grips with that, considering the geographic positioning of Nelson didn't do them too many favours.

Having watched the Giants on TV overwhelm the Auckland Pirates 91-73 on Wednesday night, Henare was wary of the "wounded dogs" who weren't shy to rough it out when they found their backs to the wall in a dark alleyway.

Nelson's consistent shooting across the board, led by Rod Grizzard's 18 and Daryl Dora's 17, proved too strong for the new Auckland franchise returning after a two-year hiatus from the NBL.

Henare's Breakers teammate, Mika Vukona, chipped in with a double double, posting 16 points and notching up 12 rebounds.

"Mika's always is a huge factor and knows how to hustle," he said of the Fijian power forward whose aggression and shooting came to the fore on Wednesday night.