British Basketball Season Kicks Off with Ambition and Competition
The new British basketball season does not creep into view. It kicks the door down.
“I've been involved for 30 years now and it's definitely the most competitive it's been,” says Newcastle Eagles owner and SLB director Paul Blake. Three decades around the sport, and he has never seen the domestic landscape look like this.
He is not alone.
Lions chasing history at home – and a statement in the NBA’s backyard
London Lions begin the defence of their domestic quadruple on Friday away at Bristol Flyers, opening the third season of the men’s Super League Basketball, the competition that rose from the ashes of the old British Basketball League in 2024.
Last season, the Lions hoarded silverware. SLB Championship, SLB Playoffs, SLB Cup, SLB Trophy. All in the same campaign. Now they are greedy for more.
The field, though, is getting crowded. The SLB grows to 10 teams with the arrival of Liverpool Basketball, another sign that the sport’s top tier is not just surviving but expanding.
And London’s ambitions stretch far beyond British borders.
On 12 October, the Lions will do something no British club has done before: face NBA opposition. A preseason date with the Portland Trail Blazers in the United States is more than a novelty; it is a declaration.
“I've wanted to be in the NBA since I was six years old. This is the closest I've ever been,” Lions CEO Lenz Balan says. For him, this is not just a glamour tie. It is branding, ambition, a message.
“It's a really important signal in the basketball world, in the sporting world. This is the ambition. We are absolutely trying to be one of the best clubs in the world.”
That ambition must be matched on European floors as well as NBA ones. The Lions return to the EuroCup, EuroLeague’s second-tier competition, for a second straight season. Last year they flashed their potential by beating eventual runners-up Besiktas Gain in the group stage, but still finished eighth out of 10 teams.
Balan wants more. He believes the summer’s recruitment, highlighted by the loan of 2025-26 EuroLeague winner Keenan Evans, can push London deeper into Europe.
“We have ambitions to definitely outperform last year,” he says. “It's going to be tough, but these are some of the best players in the world – and I think most people in London and the UK recognise the level of competition that they're playing.
“We're just really focused on executing that vision, getting better and if we keep doing that, I think we're going to get some good results.”
The message is clear: the quadruple is not enough. London want a seat at the global table.
A league that bites back
The Lions, though, will not stroll to more trophies. Not this year.
“The league is just getting more and more competitive all the time, so we know we'll be in for a fight again this season,” Blake says. “The quality of players that are now in the league across the teams top to bottom is, for me, pretty much the highest level it's been. It's extremely competitive.”
He has evidence.
Manchester Basketball made a slice of history this week, becoming the first British team to win a qualifying round match in Fiba's Basketball Champions League by beating German side Wurzburg Baskets. It is one result, one night, but it lands like a marker for the league’s credibility.
Bristol Flyers, London’s opening-night opponents, will again test themselves in the European North Basketball League, where Manchester finished runners-up last season. British clubs are no longer just dipping a toe into Europe; they are trying to stay there.
The Lions themselves warmed up for the new campaign by taking down EuroLeague side Paris Basketball in pre-season, a result that underlines the gap they are trying to close.
The domestic schedule, the European grind, the NBA showcase in Portland. This is not the Britain of one-off cup upsets and plucky underdogs. It is a calendar that looks like a serious programme for a serious sport.
Women’s game steps into the spotlight
Fifteen days after the men’s SLB tips off, it is the turn of SLBW, the women’s competition, to start writing its own chapter.
On Saturday, 3 October, Cardiff Met Archers host B Braun Sheffield Hatters, the defending champions in both league and play-offs, in the opening game. It is a fixture that captures the reality of the women’s game in Britain right now: ambition, talent, and a constant balancing act.
At Cardiff, four players are salaried while also studying masters degrees at the university. The rest of the roster is a blend of scholarship athletes, postgraduate and undergraduate students, and players juggling basketball with full-time work.
This is elite sport woven into everyday life.
“I think there's an opportunity to build something that people genuinely want to watch and follow,” says Archers head coach Stef Collins, a Great Britain Olympian from London 2012.
She looks at the global picture and sees a path.
“Women's basketball has shown what is possible internationally, particularly with the growth we're seeing in leagues like the WNBA, NCAA College Basketball.”
Collins wants SLBW to ride the momentum from the recent Women's World Cup in Berlin, where the United States claimed a fifth straight title and more than 230,000 fans came through the doors – the most-attended World Cup in the modern era.
“For me, it's also about telling the stories of the players. They're not just basketball players – they're students, they're professionals, they're international athletes, they're role models. If we can showcase that properly, I think there's an exciting future for the Super league.”
The WNBA, the independent women’s equivalent of the NBA, offers a template. In 2025, its clips drew more than one billion views on Instagram, making it the most-followed women’s sports league on the platform. That kind of reach is not lost on Collins.
“The WNBA is a really good example of what happens when you give women's basketball a platform and make the players and their stories visible,” she says. “But I think there's also a lesson beyond the basketball itself. Women's sport has shown that fans want to connect with the athletes, their personalities and their stories.
“We shouldn't be afraid to market women's basketball differently and allow our players to be themselves.”
A sport on the brink
From London’s tilt at the NBA to Manchester’s European breakthrough, from Cardiff’s student-professionals to Sheffield’s reigning champions, British basketball stands at a rare crossroads.
The trophies are one thing. The stories, the visibility, the sense that this is finally a sport refusing to apologise for its ambition – that is something else entirely.
The question now is not whether the game can grow. It is how far, and how fast, it dares to go.
