New Zealand Breakers: A Kiwi Identity Rebuilt
At Atlas Place, the New Zealand Breakers don’t just look different. They feel different.
What began as a relatively untouched first season under owner Matt Walsh’s fellow American successor, entrepreneur Matt Mitchell, has erupted into a full-scale reset. New logo. New uniforms. New coaching staff. Largely new roster. Even the court itself is new, laid down thanks to a donation from Steven Adams.
Walk into the upgraded headquarters and it hits you quickly: this is a club trying to drag itself into a new era without losing its soul.
A Kiwi identity, rebuilt from the ground up
Mitchell talks about connection and community so often it might sound like a slogan if it wasn’t backed by the scale of the overhaul. Atlas Place has been modernised, the facilities overhauled, the academy revived. The owner wants the Breakers to look and sound like New Zealand’s team, not just a Kiwi outpost in an Australian league.
“Our rebrand represents New Zealand and our heritage, the people and the land,” he told the Herald, and the decisions since he took control have followed that line.
He started by going back to the club’s roots. Dillon Boucher, a cornerstone of the Breakers’ history and their title-winning DNA, was brought in to help restore an ethos that once made the franchise the benchmark of the NBL – on the floor and in the community.
From there, Mitchell went piece by piece. A new coach. A new staff. New infrastructure. He calls it a two-year plan, a methodical attempt to put the right people in the right roles in the front office and on the court.
“I always thought it was a two-year plan,” he said. “I think we’ve done that. We’ve got a great set of people who are working every day to make this a great experience.”
The result is a Breakers organisation that feels unmistakably Kiwi, yet plugged into the global game like never before.
Herbert arrives with world champion pedigree
The most striking symbol of that ambition stands on the sideline.
Gordon Herbert is not the kind of coach NBL teams usually land. The Canadian has spent decades in Europe, coached in the NBA as an assistant with the Toronto Raptors, and in 2023 guided Germany to the FIBA World Cup title. That sort of résumé rarely finds its way to Spark Arena.
“No one thought we could bring him to New Zealand, but we were able to do it,” Mitchell said. “He’s excited to be here.”
Herbert fronts a staff that blends local insight with international experience. New Zealanders Matt Lacey, Quinn Clinton and Josiah Maama sit alongside lead assistant Sebastian Gleim, who previously coached the Franklin Bulls in the New Zealand NBL. It is a coaching group designed to understand the domestic landscape while operating at a global standard.
On the floor, the Breakers have kept a strong core. Parker Jackson-Cartwright returns to run the team, with Sam Mennenga again a key piece. Around them, Mitchell and his basketball operations staff have layered in NBL title experience with Kouat Noi and Dejan Vasiljevic.
They have also gone back to the international market. Charles Bediako arrives as a rim-protecting big man. Josiah-Jordan James brings length, defence and shooting on the wing, though a hamstring injury will delay his debut.
The pieces are there. Now comes the test.
Written off across the Tasman
As the Breakers prepare for Sunday’s home opener against the Illawarra Hawks at Spark Arena, the mood inside the club is bullish. Across the Tasman, the noise is very different.
Australian pundits have largely pushed the Breakers towards the bottom of their pre-season predictions. One statistic keeps coming up: New Zealand are the only team in the league without a player who has logged minutes in the NBA.
Mitchell shrugs at that.
“All of our guys are NBA level, played in the G League, played at high levels around the world, so it’s not necessarily a prerequisite,” he said. To him, the lack of NBA experience is a “quirk”, not a handicap.
“Most years our team and all the teams in the league have guys in the NBA, but that’s just a little quirk. We’ve found the right guys for this year and the guys who fit well together with the locals that we brought in before.”
He believes the Breakers have become a genuine destination club, somewhere players now consider seriously rather than as a last resort at the end of a European or American stint.
“Additionally, we brought in a lot of players who I think in years past might not have taken a hard look at coming to the Breakers,” he said. “We’re well represented around the world, but I think the Breakers brand is something that people now know and we’re going to be competitive in our league.”
For Mitchell, representing New Zealand in a league dominated by Australian teams remains a point of pride.
“The league’s in a great place. For us to be the one team in New Zealand that represents our country in the league is really an honour.”
Expansion, Asia and a wider footprint
The NBL’s next phase looms in the background. Talk of expansion bubbles away, with potential teams on the Gold Coast, in Canberra and even a return to Asia being floated.
The league wants arenas that hold between 8000 and 12,000 fans, which makes a second New Zealand team unlikely without significant upgrades around the country. Mitchell isn’t closing that door, but he senses the league’s priority lies elsewhere for now.
“I think right now what the league is looking to do is more about expansion of the footprint around the world,” he said.
Asia is the obvious frontier. Pre-season games, commercial opportunities, a bigger stage for a club that wants its brand to travel.
“Maybe into Asia a little bit. I think we’ll start to see more games for us played there in the pre-season, for example. We want to continue to expand the Breakers’ presence around the world.”
Academy returns to feed the future
For all the talk of expansion and global reach, Mitchell keeps circling back to something closer to home: development.
After a six-year hiatus, the Breakers academy is back. The initial intake is 20 male athletes from school years 11-13, drawn from six Auckland high schools. The programme has history; it previously helped unearth talents like Mennenga, Reuben Te Rangi and Anzac Rissetto, all now part of the club.
Mitchell sees the academy as more than a feeder for his own roster.
“The academy is really important because it is for the entire country to highlight the best young players,” he said. “One day we want them to be Breakers, but they’re not all going to be Breakers. But ... it allows them a pathway to continue to play at a high level, potentially to go to college and to use the sport for all the positive things that it can bring.”
Scholarships. Overseas experience. The grind and reward of high-level sport. He wants young New Zealanders to have those chances without needing to leave the Breakers’ orbit too early.
That philosophy – club, country, community all tied together – runs through almost everything he outlines.
A complicated past, a clear stance
Mitchell knows not everyone is immediately convinced.
His involvement in the previous ownership group lingers in the minds of some fans, a period many associate with turbulence and missteps. He doesn’t dodge that history but insists the current project is built on different foundations, starting with the people he has brought back into the fold.
“We’ve moved on from that era, and it started by bringing in people like Dillon, bringing in people like Paul and Liz Blackwell, who are always part of this,” he said. “As long as I’m part of this, they will be a part of this. It’s about the history, and it’s about doing things the right way.”
His ties to New Zealand are not just professional. His wife Jessica is a Kiwi. The family has lived here, including 18 months during Covid when the borders were shut. Mitchell splits his time between Los Angeles and New Zealand, but plans to be in the stands for most home games this season.
“I’ve been coming to the country for 21 years with my wife, and I’ve really enjoyed all parts of the country,” he said.
From Showtime to Spark Arena
Mitchell’s sporting education began a long way from Auckland. He grew up in Los Angeles during the Lakers’ Showtime era, watching Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar light up the Forum under legendary owner Jerry Buss.
He still holds Lakers season tickets. He saw first-hand what a winning team can do for a city and a community, and he wants the Breakers to play a similar role in New Zealand.
His sporting portfolio has grown quickly. In 2023, he backed a bid to launch an Auckland-based A-League football team, only to lose out to a group fronted by Bill Foley, Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray.
He has since joined the ownership group at EFL Championship club Swansea City, where the investor list includes Martha Stewart, Luka Modric and Calvin Cordozar Broadus jnr – better known as Snoop Dogg. Swansea’s squad features All Whites World Cup players Elijah Just and Marko Stamenic, giving Mitchell another thread back to New Zealand.
“Sports in general to me is a passion. And when this came about, it was something I looked hard at and something I couldn’t pass up,” he said of the Swansea move. “They approached me to be involved, and I was happy to join the team.”
He has met Snoop Dogg before, though not yet in their shared role as Swansea investors.
“I have, but not in this context, actually. I look forward to meeting him and the rest of the other investors shortly,” Mitchell said.
He visited Swansea with his family in July, spending time with coaches, front office staff and players. As of Friday morning, the club sat second in the Championship table.
Golf, growth and the chase for banner No 5
Mitchell hints that his involvement in New Zealand sport might not stop with basketball and that other projects could emerge. One idea already locked in is the Breakers’ first annual Celebrity Golf Invitational, planned for January.
He says the response has been strong. Golf, in his view, offers a perfect showcase for New Zealand’s landscapes while drawing international names into the country and using the event to support basketball development.
All of it, though, feeds back into one clear target: another title.
The Breakers’ four championships in the 2010s made them pioneers – the first New Zealand side to win a title in an Australian sporting competition. Those banners still hang, a reminder of what the club once was and what it wants to be again.
“Last year, we were off to a good start, we won the pre-season tournament, we won the in-season tournament, but that’s not why you play,” Mitchell said. “Those are steps along the way. The ultimate goal is to get to a championship, so we’re trying to do everything in our power to allow our guys to do that.”
He talks about “best practices from around the world” and then adds the twist that has come to define this new era.
“We’re trying to take best practices from around the world and put a little Kiwi dust on them and bring them to New Zealand.”
The fresh court is down. The world champion coach is in place. The academy doors are open again. Now the question hangs over Spark Arena: can that Kiwi dust lift another banner into the rafters?
