Long-serving Basketball Otago game development officer Greg Brockbank has accepted a position at Harbour Basketball in Auckland.
The 36-year-old is the new director of basketball at Harbour and will finish up with Basketball Otago on December 15.
It will be a bittersweet moment for Brockbank, who was named Keith Mair male coach of the year at the Basketball New Zealand awards in Wellington earlier this year.
He has only had one fulltime job.
For the past 13 seasons he has beavered away behind the scenes at Basketball Otago.
It was an under-the-radar role but it also afforded him a lot of opportunities, and he will forever be grateful for that.
"I wasn’t planning on leaving but an opportunity came up," Brockbank said.
"I’ve always wanted to work just in basketball. That has been my goal for a long time, so this will be great.
"The specifics of this role is exactly what I want to do, which is coaching basketball, and that is what I’ll get to do."
Brockbank is charged with coaching the academy players and setting the style of play for the Harbour association, which is the biggest in the country.
They have about 50 representative teams and there is a trip to Australia planned in January that will give him the opportunity to see how other coaches operate.
Brockbank is ambitious to coach in the NBL and he believes the move will help him develop his coaching.
The thought of coaching teams against his old association is "weird, but I can’t lose".
"Either my old team or my new team will win."
Brockbank might have split loyalties in that sense. But when Basketball Otago faced insolvency in 2014, he did some long hours alongside Kath Richards to help keep everything running.
"That year, when it was just me and Kath in the office, was probably as hard as it got.
"But it has given me plenty of opportunities as well. I get to work in a great sport and have met some really amazing people."
