Lawyer a tireless champion of Wellington basketball
Lawyer/basketball administrator b December 11, 1954 d August 15, 2018
It was fitting that Justin Toebes, who has died aged 63, was farewelled at Wellington’s ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie. To those who knew him well, the facility will stand as a testament to both his passion and his craft, even if you’ll struggle to find a public acknowledgement of Toebes anywhere at the centre.
But that’s exactly how he would have wanted it. A lawyer by profession, one of his loves was basketball, although his true contribution to the game in New Zealand will never be known, due to his desire to work in the background and not seek acknowledgement of his deeds.
Take the sports centre project as an example, which both Wellington Saints owner Nick Mills and longtime Wellington sports administrator Paul Cameron says would never have happened without Toebes.
The planning for the centre started in 2000, one year after fire destroyed Wellington Basketball’s headquarters at Newtown, with Toebes front and centre, ready to apply his skills to the project.
It took 11 years to complete, but in 2011 it opened, with 12 sprungfloor courts, a cafe, meeting rooms, running track and ample parking.
‘‘Without Justin, this stadium wouldn’t be here, I don’t care what anyone says and I’ll argue that to the end of the day,’’ Mills said.
‘‘It was going to be smaller and he flew to Australia and showed them that it had to be bigger, had to be better, had to have the right floor, had to have the right facilities. He met with mayors, he met with committees, he met with anybody that he possibly could. Come hell or high water, this stadium was going to happen.
‘‘There is no photo of Justin as you walk in here, there’s no name on the door, but those of us who knew Justin know he didn’t want any of that. He wanted a facility for people to be able to play and become better.
‘‘Every time I drive past, this stadium will mean one thing to me, it will mean Justin Toebes.’’
It was that no-nonsense, get-itdone approach that Toebes took to life.
He was born in Whangarei to father Kees, a Dutch immigrant hydrologist father and mother Heather, a Kiwi science teacher.
His family moved to Wellington in 1961, with his parents divorcing in 1970. Justin went to live with his father, but he was away working overseas through those formative teenage years at Wellington College, meaning Justin had to develop an independent streak.
He taught himself to drive, which grew into a love of cars, especially Minis, which became an exercise in physical comedy when his frame eventually grew to stand at 6ft 8in.
His driving could be terrifying for his passengers and he picked up quite a few speeding tickets.
He tried to teach his sister, Harriet, to drive once, which ended in disastrous fashion. ‘‘Nothing about the car was really explained to me apart from ‘This is the accelerator, Harriet’,’’ she said.
‘‘I put my foot down flat and we shot off. On the first corner I had a choice between a stream and a steep bank. I chose the bank and we ended up upside down.
‘‘After the car was towed away, he asked brightly, ‘OK, when do you want your next lesson?’. It took me 15 years to pluck up the courage to get behind the wheel again.’’
Toebes studied law at Victoria University and was often seen barefoot around the campus.
In 1981, while working cleaning dishes at a French restaurant in Wellington, he met his partner of 37 years, Ayliffe Maddever, who was a chef. They had a son, Finn, and daughter, Olivia.
He had held a practising certificate as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court since 1978. A litigation partner in the Wellington firm of Rainey Collins until 1989, he moved on to Buddle Findlay in Wellington, where he was on the board and head of its credit recoveries and insolvency law practice. In 2010, he set up his own boutique law firm, JT Law, but had to close it in 2016 after the diagnosis of motor neurone disease.
Throughout his career, he represented the likes of ANZ, BNZ, Kiwibank, Resene, Strait Shipping, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte.
Sport was never far away either in his legal work as he represented former Wellington Phoenix owner and bankrupt property developer Terry Serepisos, as well as one of David Tua’s former managers, Martin Pugh.
Banker Derek Williams said Toebes was highly respected throughout the law community and banking industry. ‘‘In an age of increasing specialisation, he was one of the few true generalists left in law.’’
He had a ‘‘ferocious pace of work’’ and ‘‘earned a reputation and respect for his direct, nononsense, cost-effective legal advice that achieved expeditious and numerous successful outcomes’’, Williams said.
Throughout his life, basketball was ever present. He played for Wellington College, but admitted ‘‘I wasn’t anything fancy’’.
That was backed up by masters basketball team-mate Phil Hartley, who said he rarely saw Toebes take a shot from outside the ‘‘paint’’ (the area nearest to the hoop), until one night at a Wellington Saints game.
‘‘It was about 2000, or 2001, at a Saints game and sometimes you have people shooting from halfway. Justin has the lucky ticket and we’re thinking ‘He doesn’t shoot, it’s not in the paint, it’s from halfway’.
‘‘Justin went straight out on the court, I think he was barefoot as well, in front of everybody, picks up the ball, throws it on to the backboard and straight into the hoop – $500 richer.
‘‘I don’t think he would have kept that money. I’m sure there is some kid out there who would have benefited from it.’’
Toebes helped young basketballers financially to attend camps and trips away, Hartley said.
‘‘The number of times he put his hand in his pocket for young kids going away on trips and tours.
‘‘There was always one or two kids struggling for money and I would just have to go to Justin and say ‘I’m $600 short’, and he would say ‘no problem’.’’
His family never knew of this generosity until players he had helped out through the years came to visit him during his illness to say thank you.
‘‘It all comes from . . . when you see these kids at school and they get selected for their under-13 or under-15 rep team. It’s just so fantastic they can be recognised and their self-esteem just accelerates,’’ he said in 2016 of his willingness to lend a hand.
Motor neurone disease is cruel. It causes the death of the nerve cells that control the muscles that enable people to move, speak, swallow and breathe.
Toebes was diagnosed in mid2014 and given a life expectancy of 21⁄2 years. In 2016, when he had issues with Air New Zealand about getting to the Saints’ final-four tilt in Invercargill with his motorised wheelchair, he said he anticipated it would be his last NBL finals.
But he made it to two more, watching on courtside as the Saints went down in a last-gasp finish to the Southland Sharks in the final earlier this month.
The Saints had been dear to his heart since he first became involved with them in 1991. He was a director for a time, and a long-time chairman. Mills said there was not a major decision made at the organisation over the past 20 years in which Toebes did not have a role.
A life member of Basketball New Zealand and Wellington Basketball, he was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2016, for services to basketball.
His total contribution to the sport was immense, the scale of which is unlikely to ever be known.