BNZ Breakers

A Waikato idea that ended up on the waterfront

The franchise was established in March 2003 by three Waikato businessmen and entered Australia's National Basketball League for the 2003-04 season. More than two decades on it remains the league's sole non-Australian club, which means every away trip is an international one and every home game asks visiting sides to cross the Tasman.

Ownership has turned over three times since. Liz and Paul Blackwell bought in and ran the club from 2005 to 2018, a consortium led by former NBA player Matt Walsh held it from 2018 to 2025, and Marc Mitchell became majority owner in March 2025, with the Blackwells and local partners retaining shareholdings.

The home venue moved with the ambition. The club spent its first fifteen years at the North Shore Events Centre before shifting across the harbour to Spark Arena, a 9,740-seat room on the Auckland waterfront. The first game there was played on 28 October 2011 in front of roughly 7,000 people; the hundredth came on 16 January 2025 against the Tasmania JackJumpers. Dillon Boucher, a former player and now the club's president of basketball, has said the crowd inside that building has been worth wins on its own.

The three-peat, and everything since

The record that still defines the club belongs to the first half of the 2010s. Under Andrej Lemanis, head coach from 2005 to 2013, the Breakers won the NBL championship in 2011, 2012 and 2013, becoming only the second franchise in the league's history to take three in a row. A fourth title followed in 2015.

Those teams were built around Kirk Penney, C.J. Bruton, point guard Cedric Jackson, Mika Vukona and Paul Henare, with Thomas Abercrombie running through the whole era and finishing as the club's most-capped player on 429 games.

The decade since has been thinner. The Breakers reached the grand final in 2022-23 and lost it. In 2024-25 they finished ninth at 10-19. The rebuild that followed has been continuous rather than complete.

Silverware without a finals berth

Last season produced the strangest result in the club's history. Under Petteri Koponen, in his second year in charge, the Breakers went 13-20 in the regular season, finished seventh of ten and missed the playoffs. They also won the first NBL Ignite Cup.

The competition ran inside the league season: each club's four designated games counted for both the cup table and the regular-season ladder. The Breakers beat Illawarra 117-88 on 8 October 2025, lost to Brisbane 84-113 on 12 November, beat Sydney 95-90 on 3 December and lost to S.E. Melbourne 123-116 on 21 January 2026. A 3-1 record and a points-for tally of 441 put them second on the cup ladder and straight into the final.

That final was played on 22 February 2026 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. The Breakers beat Adelaide 111-107, with captain Parker Jackson-Cartwright scoring 29 points with five assists and taking the tournament MVP award; Bryce Cotton scored 34 for the 36ers. The winners took $300,000 of a total pool the league had pushed to a record figure, with 60 per cent going to players and 40 per cent to the club. The NBL sold the night as an event rather than a fixture, with adult tickets from $15 and children at $5, and league chief executive David Stevenson promising a presentation unlike a normal league game.

The Next Stars dividend

The other thing the Breakers got out of 2025-26 was a draft pick, which in the NBL's economics counts as output. Karim Lopez, the Mexican forward signed through the league's Next Stars programme, spent two seasons in Auckland and was taken 21st overall in the 2026 NBA draft by Detroit.

That is the pitch the club now makes to young international players, and it has cost them depth in the short term: Lopez went to the NBA, Izaiah Brockington signed in Italy and Corey Webster moved to France. Recruiting has had to start from a low base almost every winter.

Herbert

On 20 May 2026 the Breakers appointed Gordon Herbert on a two-year deal, the biggest coaching hire the club has made. Herbert, 67, coached Germany to the gold medal at the 2023 FIBA World Cup and spent 2024-25 as head coach of Bayern Munich in the EuroLeague. He keeps his job with the Canadian national team alongside the Auckland role.

He replaces Koponen, who left after two seasons that produced ninth and seventh-place finishes. Boucher called Herbert a strategist with a record of winning at the highest level; chairman Marc Mitchell framed the appointment as a piece of a larger rebuild rather than a fix on its own. Herbert arrived in Auckland in August, after a three-month gap in which the club had been recruiting players without a confirmed coach. Sebastian Gleim, who worked alongside him during Germany's World Cup run, has joined as lead assistant.

The squad that starts the season

Jackson-Cartwright re-signed and remains captain. Sam Mennenga returned, and the local core of Reuben Te Rangi, Izayah Le'afa, Carlin Davison and Preston Le Gassick stayed. The additions were Dejan Vasiljevic from Adelaide and Kouat Noi from Sydney, both on multi-year terms, plus imports Charles Bediako and Josiah-Jordan James out of American college basketball and Anzac Rissetto from Europe. Four development players from the New Zealand domestic league fill out the roster.

The season has already cost them one of those signings. James tore his left hamstring in the opening moments of a pre-season win over Melbourne United and was ruled out of the opening game after scans, with his rehabilitation to be reassessed at four to six weeks. The club confirmed on 18 September 2026 that it was searching for an injury replacement, with an announcement expected within days. The timing is awkward: the Breakers play three games in their first six days.

Boucher's response was the standard one about next man up, though he also noted that pre-season absences had already forced the club to look further down its own bench than it planned to.

The season in front of them

NBL27 is the league's longest regular season: 165 games, 33 for each club, across 21 rounds, starting on 19 September 2026 and finishing on 14 February 2027. A play-in tournament follows in February, with semi-finals and the championship series in March. The league pauses for the FIBA windows of 23 November to 1 December 2026 and 22 February to 2 March 2027.

The Breakers open at home against the Illawarra Hawks on 20 September, the day after Melbourne United and Adelaide start the season. They host Cairns on New Year's Eve, and travel to Perth for HoopsFest between 13 and 17 January 2027. The Ignite Cup runs again alongside the league from 30 September 2026 to 21 February 2027, which gives the holders something concrete to defend regardless of where they sit on the ladder.