British Basketball Season 2023: A New Competitive Era

The new British basketball season hasn’t even tipped off, and already it feels different.

“I've been involved for 30 years now and it's definitely the most competitive it's been,” Newcastle Eagles owner and SLB director Paul Blake says. Three decades in the sport, and he thinks this is the peak. That should make everyone sit up.

Lions chase history at home and abroad

London Lions stride into the third season of the men’s Super League Basketball as the team everyone wants to beat, and the club everyone is watching.

Last year they didn’t just dominate. They cleaned up. SLB Championship, SLB Playoffs, SLB Cup, SLB Trophy – a domestic quadruple that underlined the gulf between them and the rest. Now they’re back for more, with the campaign running through to May, and the target is brutally simple: defend everything.

Their opening act comes on Friday away at Bristol Flyers, but the real statement date sits in bold on 12 October. In Portland, Oregon, the Lions will become the first British side ever to face NBA opposition when they take on the Portland Trail Blazers in a friendly.

For CEO Lenz Balan, that night is personal as much as it is historic.

“I've wanted to be in the NBA since I was six years old. This is the closest I've ever been,” he says. “It's a really important signal in the basketball world, in the sporting world. This is the ambition. We are absolutely trying to be one of the best clubs in the world.”

That ambition stretches beyond one glamour night in the States. The Lions are back in the EuroCup for a second successive season, again stepping into EuroLeague’s second tier with something to prove. Last term they showed their ceiling by beating eventual runners-up Besiktas Gain in the group stage, but still finished eighth out of 10. Respectable. Not enough.

Balan believes the summer’s work, including the loan arrival of 2025-26 EuroLeague winner Keenan Evans, can shift that.

“We have ambitions to definitely outperform last year,” he says. “It's going to be tough, but these are some of the best players in the world – and I think most people in London and the UK recognise the level of competition that they're playing.

“We're just really focused on executing that vision, getting better and if we keep doing that, I think we're going to get some good results.”

The Lions want to be a global basketball brand. They already own the domestic stage. Europe and the NBA spotlight will show whether the rest of the world is ready to take them seriously.

A league that won’t stand still

While London chase the world, the rest of the SLB is closing the gap.

The men’s top flight, reborn in 2024 after the British Basketball League folded, has grown again. Ten teams will contest this third season, with Liverpool Basketball joining the party and nudging the competition up a notch.

Blake has seen every version of British basketball over 30 years. He insists this one is different.

“The league is just getting more and more competitive all the time, so we know we'll be in for a fight again this season,” he says. “The quality of players that are now in the league across the teams top to bottom is, for me, pretty much the highest level it's been. It's extremely competitive.”

Recent European results back him up.

Manchester Basketball broke new ground this week, becoming the first British team to win a qualifying round match in Fiba's Basketball Champions League by beating German side Wurzburg Baskets. It’s the kind of result that used to feel like a one-off. Now it looks like a marker.

Bristol Flyers, London’s first opponents, continue to carry the British flag in the European North Basketball League, where Manchester reached the final last season. There is a sense that British clubs are no longer just making up the numbers on the continent. They’re starting to ask questions of established programmes.

The domestic race, already shaped by London’s dominance, now has a different edge. Everyone knows the Lions are the benchmark. But for once, there’s evidence that the rest are catching up.

Women’s game steps into the spotlight

Fifteen days after the men tip off, it’s the women’s turn.

SLBW, the women’s Super League Basketball competition, begins on Saturday, 3 October, with Cardiff Met Archers hosting B Braun Sheffield Hatters – last season’s champions and play-off winners – in a fixture that feels like a mission statement.

At Cardiff, the model looks very different to the men’s big-city powerhouses. Four players are salaried while also studying masters degrees at the university. Around them, the squad is built from scholarship athletes, postgraduate and undergraduate students, and others who juggle elite basketball with full-time jobs.

This is not a glossy superclub. It is a team stitched together by opportunity and ambition.

“I think there's an opportunity to build something that people genuinely want to watch and follow,” says Archers head coach Stef Collins, a member of Great Britain's 2012 Olympic squad.

She sees the bigger picture clearly.

“Women's basketball has shown what is possible internationally, particularly with the growth we're seeing in leagues like the WNBA, NCAA College Basketball.”

The recent Women's World Cup in Berlin sharpened that view. The United States claimed a fifth successive title, beating France in the final, but the real headline sat in the stands.

“It was the most-attended World Cup in the modern era with over 230,000 fans in attendance,” Collins says.

For her, the lesson isn’t only about tactics and talent. It’s about storytelling.

“For me, it's also about telling the stories of the players. They're not just basketball players – they're students, they're professionals, they're international athletes, they're role models. If we can showcase that properly, I think there's an exciting future for the Super league.”

Learning from the WNBA

If SLBW wants a blueprint, it doesn’t have to look far.

The WNBA has long been one of the pioneers in women’s sport, not just in the United States but globally. In 2025, WNBA clips drew more than one billion views on Instagram, making it the most-followed women's sports league on that platform. That kind of reach changes what’s possible.

“The WNBA is a really good example of what happens when you give women's basketball a platform and make the players and their stories visible,” Collins says.

But she also believes the lesson runs deeper than highlight reels.

“Women's sport has shown that fans want to connect with the athletes, their personalities and their stories,” she adds. “We shouldn't be afraid to market women's basketball differently and allow our players to be themselves.”

That is where SLBW’s opportunity lies. Not in copying the men’s game, but in carving out its own identity – built on access, authenticity and visibility.

As the new season breaks across both leagues, British basketball finds itself in rare territory. A men’s champion aiming to stand shoulder to shoulder with EuroLeague giants and step onto an NBA floor. Clubs punching harder in Europe. A women’s league ready to ride a global wave of interest in women’s sport.

The question now is not whether the sport can grow. It’s how far, and how fast, Britain is willing to let it run.