The New Zealand Breakers are on the hunt for a new coach after confirming Petteri Koponen will not renew his contract for a third NBL season.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Finnish coach led the Kiwi side to an inaugural Ignite Cup victory, but the club failed to make the playoffs for a second year in a row.<\/p>\n
The Auckland club said in a statement Koponen would not seek a contract extension following the 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n
Kopenen said the time was right to move on after two seasons with the Breakers.<\/p>\n
“My time in New Zealand has been one of the most rewarding chapters of my career. I fell in love with this country and the incredible community that supports the Breakers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“However, after two seasons of intense growth in the NBL, and the immense satisfaction of bringing the Ignite Cup to Auckland, I am ready for a new challenge.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank the Club, the players, and the fans for embracing me. I am proud of the culture we\u2019ve built, and I leave with the highest respect for this club.”<\/p>\n
Breakers president of operations Dillon Boucher said Koponen was a “young coach on the rise”.<\/p>\n
“We support his desire to pursue opportunities closer to home,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Professional coaching at this level demands immense sacrifice, especially half a world away from home. We\u2019ve reached a mutual agreement that the time is right for Petteri to pursue his next professional challenge.”<\/p>\n
Boucher said Koponen would depart with his “mana higher than ever” and that the Finn would “always hold a permanent place within our Breakers wh\u0101nau”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Zealand Breakers are on the hunt for a new coach after confirming Petteri Koponen will not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3392,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-306057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-breakers","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}