London Lions to face Portland Trail Blazers as Super League season gets under way
London Lions will travel to the United States to play the Portland Trail Blazers in a friendly on 12 October as Britain's Super League Basketball (SLB) season begins this week, with the champions opening their domestic campaign away to the Bristol Flyers on Friday.
The men's Super League Basketball is entering its third season after launching in 2024 following the collapse of the British Basketball League, and the London Lions arrive as defending winners of all four domestic SLB competitions, having completed a domestic quadruple last season by winning the SLB Championship, SLB Playoffs, SLB Cup and SLB Trophy. Centre Deane Williams was among the standout players in the Lions' quadruple-winning seasons. The competition expands to 10 teams this term, up from nine, with Liverpool Basketball joining the league.
The Lions will become the first British side to face an NBA team when they meet Portland on 12 October, a fixture the club views as part of a wider ambition to raise its international profile. Lions CEO Lenz Balan said: "I've wanted to be in the NBA since I was six years old. This is the closest I've ever been." He added: "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."
London return to the EuroCup for a second straight season and warmed up by beating EuroLeague outfit Paris Basketball in pre-season earlier this month. In last season's EuroCup campaign they finished eighth out of 10 teams despite a group-stage win against eventual runners-up Besiktas Gain. The club reinforced over the summer with arrivals including the loan signing of 2025-26 EuroLeague winner Keenan Evans; Balan said: "We have ambitions to definitely outperform last year." He added: "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."
There is wider optimism across SLB clubs following recent results in European competition: Manchester Basketball became the first British team to win a qualifying-round match in Fiba's Basketball Champions League by beating German side Wurzburg Baskets earlier this week, and Bristol Flyers will again compete in the European North Basketball League, where Manchester finished runners-up last season. Newcastle Eagles reached the final of the SLB Trophy last season, losing 74-68 to the London Lions. "I've been involved for 30 years now and it's definitely the most competitive it's been, pretty much in all those 30 years," Newcastle Eagles owner and SLB director Paul Blake said.
The women's Super League (SLBW) starts on Saturday, 3 October, with Cardiff Met Archers hosting B Braun Sheffield Hatters, the defending championship and play-off winners, in the opening match. At Cardiff four players are salaried while also studying masters degrees at the university; the rest of the squad comprises scholarship players, postgraduate and undergraduate students and others balancing basketball with full-time work. Archers head coach Stef Collins, who featured at the 2012 Olympics and won medals at both the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games, said: "I think there's an opportunity to build something that people genuinely want to watch and follow."
Collins pointed to recent international interest in women's basketball as a model for SLBW, noting the 2023 Women's World Cup in Berlin and the visibility of the WNBA. "It was the most-attended World Cup in the modern era with over 230,000 fans in attendance," she said. The article also notes that in 2025 WNBA clips gained more than one billion views on Instagram, making it the most-followed women's sports league on that platform; Collins said: "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. But I think there's also a lesson beyond the basketball itself. Women's sport has shown that fans want to connect with the athletes, their personalities and their stories. "We shouldn't be afraid to market women's basketball differently and allow our players to be themselves."
The immediate fixtures to note are the SLB season opener on Friday, with London Lions at Bristol Flyers, the SLBW opening game on Saturday, 3 October between Cardiff Met Archers and B Braun Sheffield Hatters, and the Lions' friendly against the Portland Trail Blazers in the United States on 12 October.