Bristol Flyers

The Bristol Flyers earned their way into the top flight the hard way, winning the National Cup in 2010 against Manchester before taking the NBL Division 1 Championship in 2011, a title that carried them up into the British Basketball League. Doug McLaughlin-Williams and Davis Browne were part of that run, players who built the club's name in the lower divisions before it ever wore its current colours.

The club did not start as the Flyers. It formed in 2006 from a merger of the Filton Flyers and the Bristol Academy, itself known as the Bristol Bombers until a year earlier, and competed under the Bristol Academy Flyers name until Stephen Lansdown, already the owner of Bristol City, bought the club in 2013. Promotion to the BBL the following year brought the rebrand and the navy blue and pink that replaced the old black and gold.

Since then, the major trophies have stayed just out of reach. The Flyers lost the 2020 BBL Cup final to the Worcester Wolves 67–59, and went down 97–78 to the Newcastle Eagles in the 2025 SLB Trophy final. Malcolm Delpeche has carried the club through those years, long enough that his personal contests with his brother Marcus, when the Flyers meet the Sheffield Sharks, have their own name: the Delpeche Derby.

The fiercer rivalry sits closer to home. Bristol's meetings with the Plymouth City Patriots make up the South West derby, and the Flyers have had the better of it for years, including a clean sweep of all four games against Plymouth in the 2023 season.