CSM Oradea

Cristian Achim's name is the one that keeps coming up whenever CSM Oradea's championship years are mentioned. Under him the Red Lions won the Liga Națională three times, in 2016, 2018 and 2019, and added a Romanian Supercup in 2019 as well.

The three titles sit inside a longer run of near-misses. Oradea has finished runner-up in the league in six separate seasons — 2014, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 — which says as much about the club's staying power as the trophies themselves; a team that keeps reaching the final does not fall apart after losing one.

That consistency carried into Europe. In the 2016–17 season Oradea became the first Romanian club to reach the group stage of the Basketball Champions League, and in 2021 it went further still, finishing third in the FIBA Europe Cup — the best continental result any Romanian side has managed.

None of this happens without U-BT Cluj-Napoca on the other side of the court. The two clubs' meetings are billed at home as the Derby-ul Ligii Naționale, which is part of why Oradea's second-place finishes sting the way they do.

Before any of that, in 2003, the club started out as Clubul Atletic Oradea, promoted to the top flight two years later and never dropped back down since. It is the same team that now plays as the Red Lions, red and blue on white, still chasing the title it last won in 2019.