The new owners of the New Zealand Breakers are determined to restore the Kiwi identity of their Aussie NBL hoops club.
Story: MARC HINTON
Something just didn’t sit right with successful and well-connected Californian Marc Mitchell the more he thought about a New Zealand Breakers basketball club that had come to mean a great deal to him. It looked, he surmised, like an organisation that had wandered off its path, and he decided to do something about it.
So, the 47-year-old “Kiwi”-American attorney and businessman did something few others could have managed, and even fewer would have dared. He bought the basketball club he was so concerned about and instituted the fixes that he saw as fundamental to its survival.
What was more, this lifelong Lakers fan, but more recent Breakers diehard, decided the best way to go forward was to wind the clock back a decade and re-embrace the values that had once been fundamental to this organisation’s existence, and, for that matter, its success.
That’s been the upshot of a major upheaval at the Auckland-based Australian National Basketball League club that saw the Mitchell-led mostly Kiwi consortium purchase the club off US-based Matt Walsh’s ownership group for an amount estimated to be in excess of $40 million.
The change of ownership had an intriguing subplot too. Mitchell had been a minority investor in Walsh’s ownership group, but the two had fallen out big time. So it took some manoeuvring from the Stanford University alumnus to get the deal over the line, but he managed it with some support from minority investors the Grice brothers (Leon and Stephen) of Wellington, their business partner Sean Colgan and former club owners Paul and Liz Blackwell.
Mitchell has acted quickly and emphatically, cleaning out a woefully under-resourced front office and rebuilding from the ground up, bringing in club legend and ex-Basketball NZ CEO Dillon Boucher as his president of basketball operations and the recently retired Tom Abercrombie as his principal hoops advisor, with a small stake in the organisation as well.
“We want to win on the court and we want to be leaders off the court,” declared Mitchell after his takeover was made official. “We are going to be a presence in our community and we are going to do things, quite frankly, the right way. We’re going to bring in people who are respected, who are honest and who people have history with and know their character.”
“It’s important to re-establish that foundation. There have been rumours over the years that this team was going to move … that’s not going to happen. We’re in Auckland, we represent New Zealand, and we’re not going anywhere. We will always be the one team representing this country in that competition.”
And Mitchell was adamant that the sound model of operation established under the Blackwells’ ownership, which netted four championships in five years between 2010-15, would be brought back. That included an essential Kiwi playing core, a talent development pathway and strong community links – all of which had been allowed to lapse under the largely unsuccessful Walsh regime.
“We have a model to follow based on the success in the past,” declared Mitchell. “We will execute on that. We want to get back to this team representing this country, being leaders in the community, and representing basketball from the grassroots all the way up to professional. That has not been done in recent times.”
“We’re going to do things differently. We’re going to do this the right way. This is a new chapter. Former players talk about being Kiwi as a superpower, and I agree with that. Our fans will be pleasantly surprised about the focus on Kiwi players, and, more importantly, Kiwi development.”
“We’re going to retool the Junior Breakers, we’re going to bring back the academy. These are things that built the team, and the sport in this country.”
So far Mitchell has been as good as his word. The club’s four off-season signings have all been Kiwis, with ex-international Rob Loe, national skipper Reuben Te Rangi and defence-minded guard Izayah Le’afa all brought back to the club, and well-performed Canterbury Rams point guard Taylor Britt added. With Sam Mennenga, Max Darling and Carlin Davison all returning for another season, that means seven of the eight fully contracted “local” players are New Zealanders.
Further to that Tall Blacks coach Judd Flavell, the architect of the club’s successful academy programme, has been brought back as an assistant to Finnish chief Petteri Koponen.
Mitchell is excited about what lies ahead for a club in bounceback mode.
“I’ve seen the potential for this league and this team for the last five years. The ceiling of this league is still so far away. For the Breakers to be the only team outside of Australia … we’re representing the entirety of New Zealand, so how we do things on the court is important and how we do things off the court is just as important.”
“It’s clear that people enjoy the team, enjoy going to games, and players enjoy being part of that family. That’s a real foundation that’s been built, and I think we got away from that. Now it’s about bringing that back.”
The 2025-26 Australian NBL season will tip off in September.