Decin

Jakub Houška spent long enough at the centre of BK Děčín's defence that the club's history is hard to tell without him. The Warriors never got past that wall, and runner-up medals in the Czech Cup in 2015 and 2016 told the same story before the club finally broke through in 2023, beating the format Nymburk had denied them for years to lift the trophy. A run to the Alpe Adria Cup final in 2020 ended the same way, against JIP Pardubice.

The club that plays under the name BK Děčín Armex today started out in 1945 as Sokol Děčín, and the decades since have brought it through Spartak-Karna, Lokomotiva and SCE before the current sponsor's name settled onto the shirt. What has not changed is the fixture against Sluneta Ústí nad Labem, played out as "El Nordico" and treated locally as the one match that matters more than a place in the table.

Home games are played in front of 1,200 people at the ČEZ Sportcentrum in Děčín, a border town on the Elbe where a top-flight basketball side has had to make its case against Nymburk's dominance for years — and where, on the night the Cup was finally won, that case looked a little easier to make.