Mestre

Mestre returned to Serie A2 in 2025, winning promotion through the playoffs and ending a 37-year absence from the second division. The team, known as I Grifoni and sometimes by its sponsor name Gemini Mestre, plays its home games at the Palasport Giuseppe Taliercio, which holds 3,509.

The absence had a specific cause. The original club was relegated to Serie B2 and went bankrupt in 1989. Its sporting title was sold, and its youth sector was merged into Reyer Venezia, the club Mestre now meets in the Derby della Laguna. For the next twenty years the city had no senior team. Locals call the period the "dark years".

The club that had gone under was no minor one. It played in Serie A1 in the 1970s and 1980s. As Superga Mestre it won Serie A2 in 1978-79 and was promoted, and it went up again in 1980-81. Renato Villalta played there from 1971 to 1976 before Virtus Bologna signed him for a record fee. The youth sector was the club's strongest asset. In 1984 Mestre became the first Italian club to hold national titles in every youth category at once: Under 15, Under 17, Under 19 and Propaganda, the minibasket level. Reyer took over that youth sector in 1989.

The rebuilding started in 2009 with Basket Club Mestre, who began in the lowest regional leagues. In 2012 the club was refounded again and bought a Serie C title. It took the name Basket Mestre 1958, carrying the year of its first foundation, in red and white with a griffin on the badge.