Unbreakable NZ on Home Stretch

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Spare a thought for the New Zealand Breakers, who spent the best part of the last 24 months away from family, from friends ... from home.

Written for nbl.com.au by Tom Hersz

The views on this page are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBL, its Clubs or partners.

Being away from home is tough, there's no question.

Then, over the last two years there were times when we couldn't leave the house at all. In many ways, that was even tougher.

So spare a thought for the New Zealand Breakers, who spent the best part of the last 24 months away from family, from friends ... from home.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and for the Breakers, that silver lining is near. They last played at Spark Arena on May 30, 2021. Before that, it was way back in January, 2020. On October 7, 2022, against the JackJumpers, it's going to be a pretty special evening - a homecoming far too long in the making.

“We’ve got the best fans and I know everyone says that, but we really do and I got to see that over the last four years, the continued support,” Breakers owner Matt Walsh told NBL Media.

“I’m hoping that there’s a level of excitement and I hope the fans understand just how hard it was for our players and our staff, and that they embrace them because the Tom Abercrombie’s of the world, they deserve it.

“He deserves a hero’s welcome when he comes back to Spark Arena and I’m confident that our fans will show up. The Kiwi culture is really embracing and I’m looking forward to that.”

Tom Abercrombie.

Walsh and his front office team already have things in motion and more planned to help with that process of re-building that fan support.

“One of the things that I’m super proud of and one of the things that was part of the Blackwell’s (previous owners) legacy was an amazing amount of community outreach,” he explained.

“And with COVID we weren’t able to do that. We’re used to our June buzzing with kids’ activities and going out into the community and that’s one of our big focuses this year. We know that if we’re out in the community, being seen doing the right thing, then that’s going to come back to us one way or another. That’s kind of your duty and responsibility when you run an organisation in a country like New Zealand, so that’s a big focus of ours.

“Te second one is just getting back to providing that incredible entertainment that is so unique. It’s not rugby, it’s not cricket. There’s nothing like when a basketball arena like Spark is pumping. It’s almost like it’s a nightclub, it’s a party.

“We can’t wait to get back and part of our mission statement is to give back to the community, but also to provide the best entertainment for our fans and we’re kind of going back to the basics.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">From the entire NBL community, thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/NZBreakers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NZBreakers</a> ?<br><br>We appreciate the sacrifice, and look forward to a return to NZ in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL23?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL23</a> <a href="https://t.co/fPZ44olvxH">pic.twitter.com/fPZ44olvxH</a></p>— The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1518063859461853184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

On the court, it’s going to be somewhat of a fresh start with Mody Maor taking the reins. After being the lead assistant under Shamir the last three seasons, his promotion was never in doubt.

“No, it wasn’t,” Walsh exclaimed.

“I wanted to give Dan the space after the season. I knew how hard it was, I was there for the majority of the season and I saw what these guys went through and Dan for two full years. So, I didn’t want to put any pressure on him.

“What I wanted to say to him was ‘Man come on, stick this out for a couple more years and then Mody will take over’. But that’s not fair and I love his family, my daughter’s best friends with his daughter, so when we had that talk, one, Dan was a huge advocate for Mody and two, just like Dan I saw the amount of passion and work that Mody put in the last two years.

“For me, I want results and ultimately it’s about winning games, but when I see the processes being done the right way, that means more to me than anything. And I see how much Mody cares.

“There will be some growing pains. He (Maor) doesn’t have that much head-coaching experience, but Mody knows the game.

“I can sit around and talk about basketball with Mody forever and I think that he’s going to in some ways be an extension of Dan, but he’s his own man as well and he brings this incredible energy and this incredible passion and the players absolutely love him.

“I wanted to have some continuity coming back home. We didn’t want to feel like we were starting over after our guys had been through so much. And he got the seal of approval from Dan and from the players, and ultimately we felt like he was the right choice.”

Maor
Mody Maor.

It’s at this point that Walsh politely interrupted me.

“One thing I would be remiss if I didn’t mention is that I’m eternally grateful to Dan for what he went through in his three years with the Breakers,” he said.

“First year [he] came in and we had the NBA tour and we jumped right into the season, and it was very disruptive and it felt like everyone was injured, and then we had this great run.

“Then Dan put in the work with passion and effort in a way that I could never ask for, for two years straight. One year being away from his family and the second year totally disrupting his family and moving them to Melbourne. So, it was a difficult conversation when he let me know that he felt that for his family it was best to go back home and to get back to Europe, but I’m eternally grateful.

“Dan’s one of my best friends and he always will be, and I wish we could have won championships with the Breakers ... but I’m very grateful for his three years and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Mody can do with the organisation and as the leader of the organisation, that’s a big step.

“The Dan Shamir era, we’ll probably look back on and be like ‘wow, they didn’t win so many games’, but I’m certainly grateful for it and I think given the circumstances, the way he carried himself, if anyone could have made excuses, it was Dan. And night in and night out, he never blamed COVID, he just said ‘we have to find a way to win’.

“I learned a lot from Dan in the three years and I’m grateful for that.”

Shamir2
Matt Walsh with Dan Shamir.

Now the task falls to Maor to get this team back to its winning ways. After winning just 27 per cent of their games the last two seasons, it could be difficult to build winning habits again, but Walsh doesn’t see it like that.

“It’s something me and Mody talked about,” he explained.

“This may be really hard for anyone on the outside to believe, but when we were winning 11 out of 14 games during the stretch in 2019 and last year when it felt like we may never win a game again, you wouldn’t have felt too much different being in our building.

“Yeah, there were some days where [you feel like] ‘yeah gosh it’s tough, you’re on the road’, but we try and get not too high and not too low and if you’re around Dan, you know you’re not partying when you win and you’re not crying when you lose.

“You do the work every day, win or lose and I think that for us, it’s not a matter of ‘these are the habits we have to get back to’. It’s ‘okay the last two years have been tough, so what? Let’s learn from it, let’s get back to the way we are as the Breakers’.

“We expect to win, we expect to have great home court, we expect to compete for championships. So, it wasn’t really a conscious thing of ‘these are the things we have to do to get back to winning habits?’ ... it was more of ‘even though we had tough circumstances these last two years, what didn’t we do great? What did we do pretty good that we can build on? What things should we eliminate? What can we learn from?’.

“One of the things Dan changed within our organisation was that evaluation and not getting too high, not getting too low. I’m probably most guilty of it sitting on the sidelines, yelling at the refs. I get too high or I get too low, and maybe Mody too. But Dan’s taught us a lot in terms of if you come in, you do the work and if you do the work the right way, you get the results.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oui oui, the rumours are true. 18-year-old French' wunderkind' Rayan Rupert is joining the Sky Sport Breakers as our NBL23 Next Star. <a href="https://t.co/RjMOB9z5w4">pic.twitter.com/RjMOB9z5w4</a></p>— Sky Sport New Zealand Breakers (@NZBreakers) <a href="https://twitter.com/NZBreakers/status/1535059302196555776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Walsh has been busily working away at the roster this offseason with Maor. The Breakers have brought in local talent like Izayah Le’Afa, Tom Vodanovich and Dan Fotu, a veteran two-way player with something to prove in Cam Gliddon, and three very high-level imports – the last of which was just announced just last week, Barry Brown.

The other two are Jarrell Brantley and Dererk Pardon, along with another French Next Star in Rayan Rupert. It’s a new group with a new look and of course Walsh is feeling good about their prospects.

“I say it every year, everyone likes their team in August and September,” he joked.

“There’s a level of optimism from everyone. But, one of the things we really wanted to do this offseason was, we wanted to get tougher. And we wanted to have a team of hard-nosed guys who we knew were going to compete every night.

“We’ve got a very young roster and we knew we were going to lose some key guys like Yanni [Wetzel] and Finn [Delany]. Those guys in terms of locals in our league, they’re impossible to replace. So how do you replace them in a way that you can still compete? We decided that we were going to go out and get tough and found some nasty guys and I think that we have some really high-level imports who are going to play that brand of basketball – defence first, tough.

“Then bringing in a guy like Izayah Le’Afa who is super-talented, but also a menace, a pest. You know Will McDowell-White will have a big impact. Rayan Rupert, he’s another one who’s going to be great defensively for us and we’re very excited about him. We need some of these guys to take the next step in their careers but, I think we’ve built a team that’s going to compete for 40 minutes every single night and I think we’re going to be good enough offensively to compete with everyone every night.

“Now the great part about our league is that it just keeps getting better and better. It’s awesome. A few years ago, there was just a couple of teams that you could look at and go ‘yeah, these are the teams that really have a chance’, but there’s so much more parity in our league [now]. I love the fact that NBA players are returning and coming. It builds a profile of our league. I love that every single game will be competitive and we’re going to give it our best shot.”

While the Breakers are promising more fight on the court, there's no question the off-court can have just as much impact.

“We’re going to get a certain bump just from being home; it’s undeniable. The fact that we’re going to be able to sleep in our own beds for the first time in two years and play at Spark Arena, I think that’s going to carry us,” Walsh added.

“The overall message would just be thank you (to our fans).

“I know that these last two years as a fan must have been really tough. When you’re the Breakers, you compete for championships and we weren’t able to do that these last few years. But we felt the support even though we were gone, we felt it from afar.

“And what I would say is one, thank you, and two, I think our guys really do deserve an incredible level of support for what they did over the last two years, to continue on and to play through some really difficult circumstances.

“So thank you and I look forward to providing hopefully some big wins at home and we’re just thankful. We’re thankful to get back, thankful for the league’s support these last two years, thankful for our fans’ support and thankful for overall New Zealand support.

“We just can’t wait to play that first home game at Spark Arena.”

Hopefully this next chapter sees the Breakers competing for championships again.

The Breakers take on Illawarra at 6pm NZST (4pm AEST) in a pre-season game this Saturday at The Stockyard, Pukekohe.

Unbreakble
New Zealand fans at Spark Arena in 2020.