Basketball team

Toyama Grouses

Club · Japan · B League

«Grouses»

376 Matches

148 wins

228 losses

30868–32083 Points

−1215 Difference

82.1 Average per match

Form L W L L W W

In April 2016, Toyama Grouses walked out for the final of the bj League needing one more win to become champions of Japan, and left with a runner-up medal after falling 86–74 to the Ryukyu Golden Kings. It was the high point of a run built under head coach Bob Nash and driven by Masashi Joho, the club's captain and the league's 2014 MVP, who carried Toyama to the Eastern Conference title that same year before the bj League folded into the new B.League.

The team behind that run had started as something much smaller. An amateur side was put together in October 1998 purely to strengthen Toyama prefecture's entry for the 2000 National Sports Festival, and it won the tournament outright. That result gave the project enough weight to go professional: in June 2005 it was refounded as the basketball department of Toyama Atlas Co., Ltd., entering the newly formed bj League the following season. The name comes from the rock ptarmigan, Toyama prefecture's bird, known locally as a grouse.

Joho left, then returned for the 2020–21 season, by which point the club had already cycled through several coaches trying to recapture 2016 — Miodrag Rajković, Don Beck, and Honoo Hamaguchi among them. The swings continued into the B.League era: Toyama dropped into the second-tier B2 League for the 2024–25 season, then won the B2 playoffs outright to force an immediate return. They go into 2025–26 back in the top-flight B1, at the Toyama City General Gymnasium, trying to hold a place they have already lost once.

Latest results

Fixtures and results

11 Oct	B League	Altiri Chiba A	94:74	W
9 Oct	B League	Tokyo Sunrockers A	96:90	W
7 Oct	B League	Kyoto Hannaryz H	77:81	L
4 Oct	B League	Utsunomiya Brex H	77:99	L
3 Oct	B League	Utsunomiya Brex H	77:67	W
27 Sep	B League	Shinshu A	81:99	L