Success story
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Set up from scratch in 2018, the capital’s new club is at the top of the Euroleague, the flagship competition in European Basketball. The model, with its dazzling trajectory, is inspired by the marketing codes of the NBA universe, adapting to the Parisian public.
This is rare enough to be underlined: for the moment, the best club in European basketball belongs to the French championship. And contrary to what we might have thought at the start of the season, it is not Monaco (2nd in the Euroleague all the same) but Paris Basketball, which is discovering the competition. And for good reason: the club did not even exist six years ago, when it was acquired in 2018 by David Kahn, an American who was once president of basketball operations for the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA franchise. Today, he has just completed a staggering series of ten straight wins in the Euroleague, including against big names on the circuit like Olympiakos and Barcelona.
To the point of making the great Real Madrid, the most successful club in history, which Paris Basket faces this Tuesday evening, seem like a common outsider. “We don’t even have time to realize because the matches come one after the other and so do the performances”ensures Liberation Amara Sy, former French international who played for Monaco, ASVEL and Paris Basket, before becoming sports director of the club in the summer of 2022. “It’s crazy. Everywhere we go, there are full houses. Everyone wants to see us play.”
Every match night, all of Paris flocks to the brand new, custom-made cradle of the Adidas Arena. From actress Alice Belaïdi to world champion Lilian Thuram, via Omar Sy, videographer Mister V, rappers Jok’Air and Hatik, L
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