Cairns Taipans are confounding basketball tipsters as they battle to stay on the NBL finals tightrope.

Last season’s losing grand finalists (13-10) are locked in a three-team battle with Queensland rivals Townsville and Gold Coast for two finals spots.

Since the end of January Cairns have been a punter’s nightmare, alternating between brilliant and bad.

They were thrashed 76-49 by Gold Coast, but rebounded to beat Townsville the following week and then defeated competition high-flyers Perth.

The latest round produced an incredible 53-point turnaround in their fortunes on successive nights.

Cairns slumped to an embarrassing 75-43 away loss to Townsville, recording their franchise-lowest score.

The following night they responded with a 77-56 home win over Melbourne, who were sitting just below them on the ladder.

“It’s bizarre, it’s baffling,” Cairns coach Aaron Fearne told AAP.

“We played pretty well against Perth at home and then seven days later play like that (against Townsville).

“Then less than 24 hours you’re playing against the Tigers and played pretty well so it’s a little bit hard to explain.

“Credit to the guys to be able to bounce back from not a great performance against Townsville and then play some really good ball against a team that had been sitting there for two weeks just ready to play us.”

The result put three wins between Cairns and Melbourne (10-13) effectively ending the Tigers finals hopes and reducing the scramble for spots to a five-team battle.

“It’s pretty much done and dusted now isn’t it?,” Tigers coach Trevor Gleeson said.

“But what disappointed me most was that there was definitely a few guys trying to look after themselves, it was not team basketball.”

American guard Jamar Wilson scored 25 for Cairns.

New Zealand (16-6) remained top of the league with an 82-74 home win over Wollongong (6-15) who had already beaten them twice this season.

Tom Abercrombie scored 25 points and Cedric Jackson 20 for the Breakers.

Fearne expected the last few rounds to produce more unpredictable results.

“It’s pretty hard to predict what’s going to happen with anybody at this stage,” Fearne said.

“Perth lost two in a row and New Zealand went down to Wollongong two weeks ago and worked pretty hard to beat them recently.

“Every single team is playing for something and I think it’s still going to be pretty unpredictable.”