Basilan Steel

Lamitan sits on Basilan, an island off the Zamboanga Peninsula, which is part of why a basketball franchise there carries weight beyond the scoreline. The Steel gave the town a team to follow when it entered the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League for the 2018–19 season, and the name itself reaches further back than the club — it comes from the Yakan word "Besih," steel, a nod to the island's old iron-ore deposits once hammered into kalis blades.

The franchise has not sat still. A forfeited game in the 2019–20 South Division Finals, ruled against them after players tested positive for COVID-19, pushed the team out of the MPBL altogether in 2021. Rebranded as the Basilan Peace Riders, they joined the newly formed Pilipinas VisMin Super Cup and won its first conference in their first year there. That same year, still carrying the Steel identity in the MPBL record books, they beat the Nueva Ecija Rice Vanguards 83–80 in overtime to take the Invitational title, settled by a buzzer-beating three from Philip Manalang under head coach Jerson Cabiltes.

The return to the MPBL for 2025 came wrapped in more name changes than results — Starhorse, then Viva Portmasters mid-season — before the club settled back on Basilan Steel for 2026, with Arnold Oliveros now in charge and JVee Casio arriving fresh off his PBA retirement.

What the Steel have not managed, across all the rebrands and the one Invitational run, is a national MPBL finals appearance — the closest they came was erased by forfeit rather than settled on the court.