A never-say-die New Zealand have snatched an 84-82 victory off an injury-hit Brisbane with Kevin Dillard winning the game for the Breakers on the buzzer.
The American import point guard, who staged a running battle all game with Brisbane rival Shawn Bruce, came up with the match-winning play in the dying seconds when he stole the ball off Jermain Beale.
With the seconds ticking away, he hit a turn-around fade-away jumper right on the bell.
It was the first time in the entire game that New Zealand led.
Brisbane were forced to make major adjustment to their back court after veteran point guard Adam Gibson suffered a calf tear in the Bullet's 85-80 loss to Illawarra.
The home fans were fired up by a pre-game heritage round presentation to club greats Leroy Loggins, Cal Bruton, Sam Mackinnon and coach Brian Kerle and would have been feeling good when the Bullets led comfortably at half time.
They led at every quarter including 61-53 going into the last quarter.
Dillard led all scorers with 28 points on the back of a 13-from-20 shooting game to go with five assists.
The victory keeps the Breakers' play-off hopes alive but they need to keep winning.
The gut-wrenching loss, combined with the latest calf injury to Gibson could be the death knell to Brisbane's hopes of contesting the finals in their first year back in the NBL after a long absence.
Match-winner Dillard though felt the victory could spark something special.
"Games like that, it just shows you that you can win tough games on the road and that's big and hopefully this is something we can build on," he said.
"We showed a lot of fight and a lot of resilience but we fought to the last minute, the last second."
Bullets coach Andrej Lemanis was disappointed by Brisbane's failure to show composure in the closing minutes.
"We just have to learn and get smarter down the stretch," he said.
"You want to talk about a lot of the good stuff, because so much good stuff happened, but it's hard to do that because you're so heart broken by the loss."
