Valencia

Vicente Solá ran the basketball section at Valencia CF when the football club, relegated and short of money, cut it loose. On 15 July 1986 he set the section up as its own club, brought in the Press Association to run it and found backing from the Roig brothers through their firm Pamesa Cerámica. That sponsorship shaped the club's colours: orange and blue, taken from the Albufera park south of the city, which gave the team its nickname, El Taronja.

The Roig connection has outlasted the ceramics business. It carried the club through its move from the old Fuente de San Luis pavilion, where Valencia Basket played for more than three decades, into the Roig Arena, which opened on 6 September 2025 with room for 15,600 for basketball.

Domestically the club has had to build its way past Barcelona and Real Madrid, who hold most of Spanish basketball's silverware between them. Valencia Basket took its first Liga ACB title in 2016–17 and added a second in 2025–26, alongside a Copa del Rey from 1998 and two Supercopa ACB wins. Abroad, the EuroCup has been the club's stage: four titles, in 2002–03, 2009–10, 2013–14 and 2018–19.

None of that changes what the club still is at its foundation: a basketball section that a football club no longer wanted, kept alive by one man's decision not to let it fold.