A giant replica of the French championship trophy – a tangle of hands reaching for a single ball – towered over the esplanade outside the Adidas Arena in northern Paris, capturing the stakes of the evening. Inside the venue, inaugurated just months before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and now home to Paris Basketball, only one team would remain standing. On Tuesday, June 24, the capital’s club hosted AS Monaco Basket, the two-time defending champions, for a fiery conclusion to the French men’s basketball championship, the Betclic Elite. Perfectly tied in this final (two wins each) and in their matchups this season (4-4), the two teams were separated only in the ultimate game, which saw the capital’s club clinch the title in dramatic fashion (99-93) for the first time in its history. It was the culmination of a journey that began in the summer of 2018.
Created from scratch by American businessmen Eric Schwartz and David Kahn, Paris Basketball intended to link the “global brand that is Paris” with the rich basketball culture of the Paris region, as explained at the time by Kahn, a former NBA executive with the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Indiana Pacers. While they took three years to reach the first division, they wasted no time launching the club into orbit once there.
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