Levanga Hokkaido

Levanga Hokkaido finished fifth in the B.League's Eastern Conference in 2024–25, the best regular-season result the club has recorded since the league started in 2016. Before that the high-water mark came in the National Basketball League (NBL), where the team placed sixth in 2013–14 and again in 2015–16. No B.League title yet, and in the Emperor's Cup the furthest they have gone is the last eight.

The captain of that recent side is Dwight Ramos, the Filipino import who arrived in 2022. Keisei Tominaga also played here, but the name older supporters bring up is Takehiko Orimo, a co-founder who kept playing into his 40s.

The club began as Rera Kamuy Hokkaido, a name taken from the Ainu language for "god of the winds", and it was under that name that it reached the 2008 ABA Club Championship final. Guangdong Southern Tigers won it 80–71. That remains the only continental medal on the shelf. In 2011 the name changed twice: first to Basketball Club Hokkaido, then in August to Levanga. The new word is "ganbare", the Japanese cheer meaning "do your best", written backwards, and it was chosen as a promise to stay a team people can shout for. Fans shorten it to "Levabu".

Levanga is the only professional basketball team in Hokkaido, so its Eastern Conference trips to Sendai, Akita and Toyama are away games. At home the team plays in Sapporo at Hokkai Kitayell, which holds 8,000 and is also the Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center.