Saudi Arabia

Basketball took organised shape in the kingdom in 1963, when the Saudi Arabian Basketball Federation was set up; membership in FIBA followed a year later. The Falcons, as the team became known, run their programme out of Riyadh, but for the matches that matter most in recent years they have travelled to Jeddah, filling the roughly 10,000 seats of the Indoor Arena at King Abdullah Sports City for the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup, a tournament they hosted, and for World Cup qualifiers.

The high point remains 1999, when Saudi Arabia took bronze at the FIBA Asia Championship in Japan, beating Chinese Taipei 93–67 in the third-place game. A World Cup or Olympic appearance has so far stayed out of reach. Jordan has become the team's most familiar opponent of late, with Syria, Lebanon and Egypt filling out the list of rivals the Falcons meet most often in Asian and Arab competition.

Ricard Casas, the Spanish coach who arrived after spells with Bahrain's national team and as an assistant at Barcelona, took charge of the side in 2025. On the floor, the team leans on a mixed core: Khalid Abdel Gabar has carried much of the scoring load as a guard, while Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, a naturalised player who came through Michigan's college programme before professional stints in Europe and the NBA G League, gives the roster a different kind of experience. It is the captain, though, who anchors the side longest in the collective memory — Mohammed Al-Marwani, a centre whose career at Al-Ittihad and Al-Wehda made him the player most identified with the national team's recent era.