Beşiktaş

Beşiktaş won the Basketbol Süper Ligi twice, and the second one came with a full set: in 2011–12 the club beat Anadolu Efes 4–2 in the championship series, added the Turkish Cup after edging Banvit 78–74 in the final, and closed the season with the FIBA EuroChallenge, seeing off Élan Chalon 91–86 in Debrecen, where Pops Mensah-Bonsu was named Final Four MVP. The first title had come decades earlier, in 1974–75, against Galatasaray, under Ateş Çubukçu.

The basketball section traces back to 1933, when it opened with a match against Galatasaray, but it did not survive in one line: the team disbanded after the 1936 Berlin Olympics and only returned in 1940, rebuilt around players who had come over from Barkhoba, a Jewish club that had folded. Jak Habip and Avram Barokas were among those who carried the section through that re-formation. A second lean spell followed between 1950 and 1955, before the club reorganised again in 1955–56.

Names have passed through the roster that a basketball follower elsewhere would recognise — Allen Iverson, Deron Williams, Carlos Arroyo — alongside Turkish figures such as Erman Kunter and Semih Erden. The team now plays out of the BJK Akatlar Arena, a modest 3,200-seat hall by the standards of a club with a European trophy in the cabinet.

Fenerbahçe is the opponent that matters most: the derby between the two dates back to 1945 and is still billed as the Dev Derbi, a fixture where recent form counts for little once the two sides are on the same floor. Galatasaray, the club's first-ever opponent back in 1933, remains the other name on that short list of rivals.