The fact Illawarra leapfrogged Brisbane into second spot on percentage without lifting a finger by virtue of the the Bullets loss to New Zealand on Friday, is testament to just how volatile the ladder is at the midpoint of the season.

While it’s keeping the fans and media occupied, Lemanis said the ladder is not a primary concern for the club’s themselves.

“It always intrigues me that positions on the ladder mean so much to the media at this stage,” Lemanis said after Friday’s loss to the Breakers.

“If you look at it, one win or one loss changes everything, it’s that bunched up. There is no top team or bottom team there’s just a bunch of teams. Everyone’s still got home and away to play, we haven’t played Illawarra yet so there’s all those things going on.

“I don’t know of any game where you can go in and say any one team is favoured to win and my feeling is it’s going to be like that right up to the last game.

“I honestly feel that in the last week of the competition you’re going to have eight teams that can still make the play-offs depending on other results and points’ spreads so it’s going to be exciting.There’s some really good basketball being played...it’s probably not that good for a coach’s hairline.”

The comments come as the Bullets prepare to take on Illawarra for the first time on Saturday in a pivotal second versus third showdown The Hawks go in on the back of five wins from their past seven games while the Bullets, who set the early pace, have dropped three of their last four. 

It will be the first of a pair of clashes between the teams in the space of eight days and Lemanis believes both sides will be looking to put a gap on the rest of the field.

“No one’s been able to break away from the pack so that’s there for anyone to step up,” Lemanis said.

“That’s reflected in the tightness of the ladder. For us, I expect us to continue build and get better over the course of the year because we started from zero. We hadn’t played a minute together, we didn’t have any core guys returning so there’s a process of going through experiences and learning from those experiences where we just have to have the time to do it.

“We’re in a good little run of games here, we go back and play on Saturday so we’re looking forward to it.”