Paris Basketball

When the two Parisian clubs merged in 2018 and the sporting licence stayed with Levallois, David Kahn, once in charge of basketball operations at the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Eric Schwartz filled the gap by buying the rights of Hyères Toulon Var Basket, a side just relegated to Pro B, and moving them to Paris under the name Paris Basket Avenir. The club took the name Paris Basketball for its first season in 2018–19. What followed was not the slow climb clubs usually make. Promotion arrived in 2020–21 with the Pro B title, and in their first season in the top flight, Betclic Élite, Paris reached third place and a semi-final. Three years after joining the elite, the club was handed a wildcard into the EuroLeague for 2024–25. The EuroCup had already been won in 2023–24, with T.J. Shorts named MVP of that competition and of the French league in the same year. Tiago Splitter, who won a title with the San Antonio Spurs as a player, took over as head coach in June 2024 and guided the club to the French championship and the Coupe de France in 2024–25. Paris also has its own pipeline into the NBA: Ismaël Kamagate and Juhann Begarin both came through the academy, were drafted, and returned to play in Paris before their moves across the Atlantic. Since 2024 the club has played at the Adidas Arena in the north of the city. None of this history carries much weight without Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans across town, the club that kept the old sporting rights in 2018. Games between the two are known simply as the derby parisien, and Nanterre 92 is drawn into the same local rivalry whenever the fixture list allows.