KoGas Seoul Thunder

Between 2001 and 2010, a Seoul-based team took the ABA Club Championship three times. Those were the years Seoul Samsung Thunders stopped being a domestic curiosity and started being a team other clubs measured themselves against.

The Korean Basketball League crowns came the same decade, in 2000–01 and again in 2005–06. Kim Hyun-jun's number ten has been retired since, while Seo Jang-hoon's spell in the paint is the one older supporters still bring up unprompted.

Two fixtures still sharpen the calendar more than any trophy. Games against SK Knights are billed as the Seoul Derby, city against city, and matches with Changwon LG Sakers carry the label of the Electronics Derby — a name that gives away exactly who used to sign the players' pay cheques.

The team plays out of Jamsil Arena now, a venue that holds a little over 11,000 and has staged both the championship years and the leaner ones since. Blue, white and yellow trace back to where the club actually began: not as a Seoul institution at all, but as the works team of Samsung Electronics, founded in 1978 and based in Suwon until the move into the capital in 2001.