Breakers coach Paul Henare had a long chat with his players to point out a few home truths after their fourth defeat in the last five ANBL games.

New Zealand Breakers coach Paul Henare has delivered a withering assessment of his free-falling team after their final quarter meltdown against Adelaide at Spark Arena on Friday night.

"Soft. Soft," said Henare as he assessed a 34-11 final quarter that saw the visiting 36ers storm back from nine down early to waltz to a 90-75 victory on the back of a 22-2 run that turned the game on its head.

And when Henare uses the word "soft" you know it's through gritted teeth. As a club legend who has his number hanging from the rafters at Atlas Place he never backed down from a challenge and always played with a full tank of commitment juice.

It must be killing him to see his team playing with so little heart, passion and intensity. Not to mention nous.

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"Guys were just driving past and laying the ball up. I definitely look at myself and defensive schemes to try put us in better positions. But that was just soft," he added

You know there is some soul-searching going on among the Breakers who led for the first three quarters against the Sixers, then undid their hard work with the limpest final stanza they have produced all season. It was their fourth defeat in five games since the Fiba international break, as they have plummeted from a commanding 9-1 record to a suddenly reachable 10-5.

Henare was later than he's ever been for his post-game media, finally turning up three-quarters of an hour after the final buzzer. That, he explained, was because he and his players had been having "a good chat".

Asked the tone of that conversation, he replied: "We've got the weekend off and I didn't want to sit on that until Monday. So while it was fresh in everyone's mind we hashed out a few things and talked them over and hopefully we'll see some change. We're hurting a little bit.

"It's a tough one to swallow. We played 25 minutes of pretty darned good basketball and then we have a fourth quarter like that. It is a balancing act. Do you get on the guys for a crappy 10 minutes of hoops and forget about the rest?

"But the way we finished that game is a sign of how we've been the last few weeks. There's just a little bit of softness about us and accountability is lacking right now. We needed to talk that through."

To put the Breakers' total and utter collapse into perspective, the 15-point winning margin for the Sixers was the largest achieved in 5891 games for a team that trailed through the first three periods since quarters were introduced to the NBL.

Henare's men shot a lousy 36 per cent from the floor, and made just seven of 29 three-pointers. In the final period they made just four of 21 shots, while allowing the Sixers to make 12 of their 19 attempts.

Their defence on Adelaide sixth man Ramone Moore was more or less non-existent, the big guard having his way en route to 27 points (11/16 FG), five boards, five assists and zero turnovers (the first time that's been done off the pine in the 40-minute NBL).

"He's talented player, a big guard, but having a game like that with the majority of the points in the paint was unacceptable."

And so it continued. Excluding Alex Pledger's 12 points on four-of-11 shooting, no Breakers starter cracked double-figures or made more than three field goals. Tom Abercrombie had just two points on one-of-six shooting. Imports Edgar Sosa (-27 in the scoring plus/minus) and DJ Newbill combined to shoot six of 22. Mika Vukona was a non-factor.

Good enough?

"Not at all," said Henare. "That last quarter we went away from what was working well. DJ and Sos and whoever else were just jacking the ball up from three rather than getting in the paint like we'd done the whole game."

The only thing resembling a positive for the Kiwi club was a strong bench effort, headed by a busy 11 points in just nine minutes from Finn Delany and a vague return to shooting form for veteran Kirk Penney (11 points at a five-of-12 clip).

The Breakers players have a rare weekend off to think about things before reassembling Monday to prepare for Friday's visit to Sydney. Suddenly the worst team in the league looks a formidable hurdle.