The Breakers' Ambitious Rebuild Under Matt Mitchell
At Atlas Place, the old Breakers are almost unrecognisable.
The logo is new. The uniforms are new. The court itself is new, a gleaming floor gifted by Steven Adams. The coaching staff and much of the roster have turned over. Even the academy, once mothballed, is back in business.
All of it carries the clear fingerprint of owner Matt Walsh’s fellow American, but in this case, it is actually the club’s owner — Matt Mitchell — driving a different kind of reset: one that insists the only New Zealand team in the Australian NBL must feel unmistakably Kiwi.
A club rebuilt from the ground up
For the first season under Mitchell, not much changed. Then the real work began.
He poured money into Atlas Place, modernising facilities and turning the headquarters into something closer to a high-end performance hub than a tired training base. The rebrand followed, with a logo and look designed, as Mitchell puts it, to reflect “New Zealand and our heritage, the people and the land.”
He didn’t just tweak around the edges. He tore down and started again.
“When I bought the team, we had to restart everything. We had to rebuild the foundation fully,” he told the Herald.
That rebuild started with a familiar face: club great Dillon Boucher, brought back to help restore the old Breakers ethos – how to win championships, how to matter in the community.
Step by step, Mitchell assembled what he calls a “wonderful staff,” on and off the court. New coach, new team, new identity. The result is a franchise that looks and feels different, yet leans heavily on its own history.
The goal is not subtle. A fifth championship banner.
Two-year plan, long-term vision
Mitchell talks about a two-year plan, but the ambition stretches far beyond that. The idea was simple enough: put the right people in the right roles, from the front office to the locker room, and build the infrastructure for sustained success.
“I always thought it was a two-year plan to bring people in and get everybody playing in the right positions on the front office side, and on the basketball side,” he says. “I think we’ve done that.”
The Breakers now enter Sunday’s home opener against the Illawarra Hawks at Spark Arena with the foundations laid and the pressure squarely on the product.
The core remains strong. Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Sam Mennenga return to lead the group. Around them, Mitchell and his basketball department have layered in NBL championship experience with Kouat Noi and Dejan Vasiljevic, plus international size and versatility in Charles Bediako and Josiah-Jordan James.
Bediako gives them a genuine rim protector. James, a long, defensive-minded wing who can shoot, will miss the start of the season with a hamstring injury, but looms as a significant piece once fit.
World champion on the Breakers bench
The most striking change sits in the coach’s chair. Gordon Herbert arrives with a résumé that dwarfs most of his peers in the league.
The Canadian has coached across Europe’s top competitions and spent a season as an assistant with the Toronto Raptors. In 2023, he guided Germany to a FIBA World Cup title, a crowning achievement that instantly made his name resonate globally.
“No one thought we could bring him to New Zealand, but we were able to do it,” Mitchell says. “He’s excited to be here.”
Herbert is backed by a staff that blends local knowledge and international experience: New Zealanders Matt Lacey, Quinn Clinton and Josiah Maama, alongside lead assistant Sebastian Gleim, who previously coached the Franklin Bulls in the New Zealand NBL.
The bench mirrors Mitchell’s broader strategy. Local roots, global reach.
He believes the Breakers now sit on the radar of players who once might have dismissed a move to New Zealand out of hand.
“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 says. “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.”
Doubts across the ditch
Across the Tasman, the scepticism is loud. Pundits in Australia are tipping the Breakers to slide towards the bottom of the table.
Their main argument? The Breakers are the only team in the league without NBA experience on the roster.
Mitchell shrugs at that. To him, it is a curiosity, not a weakness.
“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 says. “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 sees a league in rude health and a responsibility that goes beyond the ladder.
“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 talk and a wider footprint
The NBL’s next moves are being plotted in boardrooms: potential teams on the Gold Coast and in Canberra, and a renewed push into Asia. The league wants arenas that hold between 8000 and 12,000 fans, a requirement that makes a second New Zealand team unlikely without serious venue upgrades.
Mitchell is not closing the door on the idea, but his focus is clear. He sees expansion more in terms of geography and exposure than simply adding neighbours.
“I think right now what the league is looking to do is more about expansion of the footprint around the world,” he says. “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.”
The academy returns – and a pathway reopens
Beneath the bright lights of Spark Arena, another project is quietly restarting: the Breakers academy.
After a six-year hiatus, the club has revived the programme with an initial intake of 20 male athletes from school years 11-13, drawn from six Auckland high schools.
The academy has history. In previous years, it unearthed players like Mennenga, Reuben Te Rangi and Anzac Rissetto, all now part of the senior squad. For Mitchell, this is not a side project. It is central to the Breakers’ identity.
“The academy is really important because it is for the entire country to highlight the best young players,” he says. “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 elite sport. Mitchell wants young New Zealanders to have access to all of it.
A personal stake in New Zealand
Scepticism lingers in some corners, shaped in part by Mitchell’s involvement in a previous ownership group. He knows it, and he does not duck it.
His answer is to point to the people he has brought back – Boucher, and Paul and Liz Blackwell – and to his own ties to the country.
“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 says. “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.”
Mitchell’s connection to New Zealand is not a recent marketing exercise. His wife Jessica is a Kiwi. The family has lived here, including 18 months during Covid with the borders closed. He has been visiting for more than two decades.
He now splits his time between Los Angeles and New Zealand, but plans to be in the stands for most home games this season.
From Showtime to Spark Arena
Mitchell’s sporting education came on the other side of the Pacific, in Los Angeles during the Lakers’ famed Showtime era of the 1980s. Jerry Buss owned the team. Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ran the floor. Mitchell, still a Lakers season-ticket holder, watched what success did to a city and a community.
That is the template in his mind: a club that wins and belongs to its people.
His sporting interests stretch beyond basketball. In 2023, he was part of a consortium that tried to launch an Auckland-based A-League football team, a bid ultimately beaten by a group fronted by Bill Foley, Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray.
He has since joined the ownership group of EFL Championship side Swansea City, whose investors include 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.
“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,” Mitchell says of joining Swansea. “They approached me to be involved, and I was happy to join the team.”
Yes, he has met Snoop Dogg, though not yet in the context of Swansea. That will come. In July, Mitchell took his family to Wales, met the coaches, front office and players, and came away impressed. As of Friday morning, Swansea sat second in the Championship table.
Golf, global names and Kiwi dust
Mitchell hints that more New Zealand sports ventures could follow. One confirmed project is already locked in: the Breakers’ first annual Celebrity Golf Invitational, planned for January.
He says the response has been strong. The concept is simple: use golf to showcase New Zealand, attract international names, and funnel support back into basketball development.
It fits the broader pattern. Raise the profile. Grow the game. Make the Breakers a touchpoint for sport in this country.
But strip away the rebrand, the academy, the expansion talk, the golf tournament and the global partnerships, and one target still towers over everything.
A championship.
The Breakers were the first New Zealand team in an Australian competition to win a title, and they collected four of them in the 2010s. That history hangs over the current group as both weight and inspiration.
“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 says. “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.”
His final line lands like a mission statement for the whole project.
“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.”
Now the question is simple: will that Kiwi dust be enough to lift another banner into the rafters at Spark Arena?
