Matt Walsh, a 2002 graduate of Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, was featured by the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article titled “Germantown Academy’s Matt Walsh ’02 used to ride shotgun with Shaq. Now he owns a New Zealand team playing the Sixers.”
According to the story, Walsh played three seasons at the University of Florida before leaving early for the NBA. He went undrafted and signed with the Miami Heat but was released three months later.
After playing 10 seasons in Europe, he bought a professional basketball team in New Zealand in 2017 at the age of 31.
His team, the New Zealand Breakers, compete in Australia’s National Basketball League. They played the Sixers on Monday night in a preseason game at the Wells Fargo Center.
Check out the highlights below:
Walsh had never visited New Zealand before the purchase, the Inquirer said.
“When I bought the team, people thought I was totally insane,” said Walsh. “The response would be, ‘What the heck is a guy from Philly buying a team in New Zealand for?’ I always laugh about it.”
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Former NBA star Shawn Marion is part of the ownership team.
“The timing of it was funny because I promised my wife that we were done traveling overseas,” Walsh, who currently lives in Austin, Texas, told the Inquirer. “We had finally settled back in Philadelphia and my wife was six months pregnant. I realized that if I wanted to grow the team, I had to live there. I came home and said, ‘I think we have to move to New Zealand. It was a foreign place to us, but I wouldn’t ask her and my family to move there if it wasn’t an absolutely amazing place and there was an amazing opportunity for us. We went for it.”
The Inquirer said he also owns a soccer team in Mexico and has a strong business career with tech companies.
“He was just the most generous guy,” Walsh said of his time with NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal. “It always stuck with me that if I’m ever able to have any success in life, treat people like that. I was the 15th man on the roster. I got cut two months into the season. A guy like Shaq, he took the time to treat the bottom guy on the roster like I was [Dwyane] Wade or if I was Jason Williams. When I got cut, my agent was like, ‘Do you know who the maddest guy in the locker room was? It was Shaq.’ Now I look back on it and I’m like, ‘How did that happen?’”
Walsh was inducted into the Germantown Academy Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012.
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Photos: Matt Walsh, Wikipedia, ebay.com