Al-Riyadi

In April 2024, Al-Riyadi walked off the floor having beaten Shabab Al-Ahli 122–96 to lift the first-ever Basketball Champions League Asia title, with Wael Arakji, named the tournament's most valuable player. It capped a run of Lebanese league titles that stretches back further than almost any rival can match: 39 championships since 1951.

The club itself was set up in 1934 by eight men — among them Hussein Sejaan, Hassan Ladki and Fouad Zantout — as a multi-sports project, though it is the basketball section that carries the name Al-Riyadi across Lebanon and beyond. The team plays as "The Yellow Castle," a nod worn on yellow and blue colours, out of the Saeb Salam Arena in Beirut's Manara district, a 2,500-seat ground built in 1991 with backing from the future president Tammam Salam.

No fixture on the calendar carries more weight than the meeting with Sagesse Beirut, a derby billed locally as the "Lebanese El Clásico." The rivalry runs past the scoreboard: Al-Riyadi's support draws from Beirut's Sunni community and has been tied to the politician Saad Hariri, while Sagesse is rooted in the Maronite community and linked to the Lebanese Forces. Imports have shaped the club's biggest nights, too — Justin Brownlee and Thon Maker among the names who have worn the yellow in continental competition, including the 2011 and 2017 FIBA Asia Champions Cup wins over Mahram Tehran and China Kashgar.

Ninety years on from the eight founders drawing up a multi-sports club in Beirut, it is still that same badge lifting trophies on courts across the region.