{"id":309104,"date":"2026-03-02T07:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/309104\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T07:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:56:08","slug":"breakers-coach-will-a-kiwi-be-signed-to-replace-petteri-koponen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/309104\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakers coach: Will a Kiwi be signed to replace Petteri Koponen?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Current Tall Blacks head coach Judd Flavell<\/a> is very familiar with the NBL, after 17 seasons in assistant roles.<\/p>\n

Flavell spent 13 seasons with the Breakers, followed by three seasons with South East Melbourne Phoenix, before rejoining the Breakers coaching staff at the start of the 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n

Aaron Young is another who has worked with national age-group teams and is a current Perth Wildcats assistant coach.<\/p>\n

His first role in the NBL in 2014 was as the Breakers\u2019 video co-ordinator, before going on to coaching roles in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Flavell and Young have both worked closely with up-and-coming local talent, as well as some of the NBL\u2019s biggest stars during their time in the league.<\/p>\n

Short-lived stint<\/p>\n

The Breakers owners, who took control in March last year, have backed bringing New Zealand talent back to the club, on and off the court, but having a local coach has not ended well in the past.<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s inaugural coach in 2003, Jeff Green, lasted just two months before resigning.<\/p>\n

\"PaulPaul Henare left the New Zealand Breakers after the 2017-18 season. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

Former Tall Black and Breakers captain Paul Henare<\/a> coached the team for the 2016\/17 and 2017\/18 seasons then left in murky circumstances, when he turned down a contract extension, following an ownership change.<\/p>\n

In the last seven seasons, the Breakers have had three different head coaches, but none had worked in the NBL before arriving in Auckland.<\/p>\n

Koponen spent two seasons with the Breakers in his first professional head-coaching gig. He was signed at short notice when Israeli-American Mody Maor quit during the 2024\/25 pre-season for a big-money contract coaching in Japan.<\/p>\n

Maor had stepped up from an assistant role to coach the team in the 2022\/23 season, following a three-season stint by Israeli Dan Shamir.<\/p>\n

The Breakers\u2019 longest-serving coach, Australian Andrej Lemanis, was in the role for eight seasons from 2005 and won three championships.<\/p>\n

Americans, Australians and the Finn<\/p>\n

Across the NBL, which enters the post-season this week, seven of the 10 head coaches this season were not born in Australia.<\/p>\n

Other than Koponen, the remaining six were born in America.<\/p>\n

\"BreakersBreakers guard Karim Lopez during the New Zealand Breakers v Tasmania JackJumpers NBL clash at Spark Arena. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

However, Sydney Kings coach Brian Goorjian has been involved with Australian basketball since the late 1970s, and Brisbane Bullets interim coach Darryl McDonald has been a player and then coach since the mid-1990s, so could be considered Australian-Americans.<\/p>\n

The NBL is both a stepping stone to other coaching roles and a place experienced coaches return to.<\/p>\n

Coaches usually arrive with varying experience in Europe or America.<\/p>\n

Like Koponen, Illawarra Hawks coach Justin Tatum had no head-coaching experience with professional teams before he took over the Hawks in 2023 and ultimately guided them to last season\u2019s championship.<\/p>\n

Former NBA player Scott Roth was the inaugural coach of the Tasmania JackJumpers in the 2021\/22 season and was recognised as the NBL Coach of the Year that season, before the team won the championship in 2024.<\/p>\n

Roth had years of experience in both America and Europe before joining the NBL.<\/p>\n

Coaches also bounce around the league, with 72-year-old Goorjian first coaching the Kings in the early 2000s, before switching to the now-defunct South Dragons for a season, returning from Asia to coach the Hawks and then moving on to his current role with the Kings.<\/p>\n

Australian Adam Forde, currently the Cairns Taipans head coach, has also had involvement with the Kings and the Perth Wildcats.<\/p>\n

The Breakers want to win more NBL titles<\/a> and securing the right coach will be crucial, but in the NBL, there is no one pathway to getting a winning coach on board.<\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Current Tall Blacks head coach Judd Flavell is very familiar with the NBL, after 17 seasons in assistant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5195,3392,1320,159984,194,167335,111,139,69,167334,11789,4482,31706,213,61,1533],"class_list":{"0":"post-309104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-be","9":"tag-breakers","10":"tag-coach","11":"tag-felicity","12":"tag-kiwi","13":"tag-koponen","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-petteri","18":"tag-reid","19":"tag-replace","20":"tag-signed","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-to","23":"tag-will"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309104","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=309104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}