Kk Skopje 2023

A basketball club playing in Skopje under the name of a city that already has a dozen of them is bound to draw questions about who it actually is. KK Skopje 2023 answers them by not answering: it shares no lineage with KK MZT Skopje, the side that has taken 13 Macedonian championships and 14 domestic cups from the same city, and it carries none of the trophies or nicknames that older Skopje clubs wear. The name states only what can be stated for certain — where it plays and when it started.

That start came in 2023, and the club went straight into the Macedonian Superleague rather than working up through a lower tier. Reports at one point placed it in ABA League 2 alongside Skopje's regional entrants, but that competition's Macedonian places belong to TFT Skopje and MZT Skopje Aerodrom; KK Skopje 2023's fixtures have run through the domestic league, against sides such as TFT Skopje, Kozuv Gevgelija and MZT Skopje itself, with a trip to face Vojvodina Novi Sad among them.

No championship or cup has come its way yet, which is not unusual for a club barely three years old, and its colours and badge have not travelled far beyond its own matchday. Its games most likely fall at Jane Sandanski Arena, the venue MZT Skopje calls home.

What the club has, more than any settled identity, is the position it plays from: newcomer in a city where basketball history already belongs to somebody else, and still writing the part that will eventually be its own.