Gargždai

The Western Lithuania Derby against BC Neptūnas carries less weight on the scoreboard than it does on the map.

That distance is the point. The old club, Gargždai-SC, collapsed in February 2024 under roughly €258,000 to €260,000 of debt. The Klaipėda District Municipality had put money in but would not take the club on outright, and when it proposed covering just the players' and coaches' wages instead, the Lithuanian Basketball League turned the offer down. Gargždai-SC folded, and its old home floor, Švyturio Arena in Klaipėda, went with it.

What replaced it was a new legal entity. It entered the fourth-tier RKL B Division for 2024–25 and won it outright, a result strong enough that the league board granted the rebuilt club a licence for the top-tier LKL the following season. It plays now at Gargždų Arena, a 1,400-seat ground in the town itself rather than in Klaipėda.

The predecessor's honours, an NKL second-tier title in 2021–22 and several RKL championships, belong to a club that no longer exists on paper, even if names like Mantas Ruikis and Deividas Gailius carried across. Further back, when Žalgiris internationals Jonas Mačiulis and Povilas Čukinas put money into the Gargždai project as shareholders from 2011, the club they backed was already trying to punch above a small town's weight. The one now playing in the LKL is doing the same thing again, from a division lower than where that investment once aimed.