Lyonso

Darhius Nunn wears the captain's armband at a club built to feed someone else's academy. Lyonso exists because four sides from the southern edge of Lyon — Pierre-Bénite, Oullins Sainte-Foy and Saint-Genis-Laval among them — folded themselves into one territorial cooperation in 2015.

The arrangement with LDLC ASVEL shapes everything else. Tony Parker holds a 30% stake, and Lyonso's roster turns over each summer as young ASVEL prospects arrive on loan to get minutes they would not see at the top level — Adam Atamna and Elwin Ndjock among the recent names. It is a pipeline, not a rivalry of equals, and the club has made peace with that role rather than pretending otherwise.

Founder and president Hervé Piquet-Gauthier has kept the project in Nationale 1 since the promotion, where the sharper edges now come from Saint-Vallier and from SCABB, the Saint-Chamond/Andrézieux combine — games the local press has started calling derbies, borrowed language for a club still working out who its natural enemies are.

Home is Salle Paul-Bert, inside the Pôle Sportif La Canopée in Pierre-Bénite, 1,100 seats under black and yellow, with a slogan — "Rugir plus fort" — that asks more of the crowd than the building's size really allows.