The Breakers entered this offseason with only Parker Jackson-Cartwright, Reuben Te Rangi, and Izayah Le’Afa under contract. And no head coach. But GM Dillon Boucher had been able to spend the previous year observing his team and seeing where they needed to improve.

In an ideal world, the Breakers would have followed their (long overdue) ownership change by barging their way into the finals. Bit much to ask for a championship straight up... but imagine how vindicating it would have been?

The past offseason ushered in a new era for the NZ Breakers with fresh ownership and a promised return to their Aotearoa identity. That switch came as a blessed relief after several years of mediocrity packaged as global ambition

It’s a relief to see the New Zealand Breakers, now that they’re back under local ownership and doing things very differently, sneak their way through preseason as an underrated force, waiting to let their actions on the court supply the hype.

The shadows have lifted, the dark clouds have cleared, and the New Zealand Breakers have been sold. News came through on 20 March that a local ownership group had bought out Matt Walsh and mates.

Let us talk about the New Zealand Breakers, who recently wrapped up their latest NBL campaign. It was a season that began with scepticism based on a roster full of project players and the rookie foreign head coach hired to whip them into shape.

There were plenty of reasons to discount the New Zealand Breakers heading into NBL25. Yet they were 2-0 when they flew to the USA and then they returned and they kept winning.

Last season the Breakers gave fewer minutes to NZers than ever before (a record that they’re going to crush again in NBL25) and yet it was still the most prosperous season we’ve ever witnessed for kiwi players in that league.

These are glorious times for basketball in Aotearoa. Already established as the fastest growing sport in the country, we recently saw the New Zealand team finish fourth at the FIBA Men’s U17 World Championships, with Oscar Goodman crowned as part of the tournament’s All Star Five…

As we traversed what was already shaping up to be a concerning offseason, the feeling was that the Breakers would be alright as long as Head Coach Mody Maor was around. But now he’s leaving.

In a topsy-turvy, up-and-down season... the Breakers finished about where they should have: right in the middle. They made the play-ins but not the playoffs, winning one knockout game but losing the other

There is a possibility, something we need to at least consider, that perhaps maybe potentially we might have given the New Zealand Breakers too much credit. When they turned everything around so suddenly last season it was natural to feel as though…

After several years of mediocrity, some pandemic-influenced and some not, the Breakers surged back into Australian National Basketball League prominence last season under the inspirational guidance of new head coach Mody Maor

The whole Next Star journey has been a strange one for the Breakers but as their latest foreign prospect officially declares for the NBA Draft it seems as though they’ve finally figured it out

Breakers recruitment this season was top notch and for once they’ve actually got the structure, the success, and the coach to be able to do something they have not yet done since the change in ownership: retain an import signing.

It’s not supposed to happen that a team finishes dead last one season then surges into triumphant championship contention the next. Standard convention says that it takes time to traverse that distance

Credit where credit is due because the Breakers have done a lot of nice things in the weeks since Mody Maor took over as head coach. Logical, respectable roster building things