Birmingham Knights

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Birmingham Knights
Founded 2011
Hall North Solihull Sports Center
Homepage birminghamknights.co.uk
Trainer Paul Douglas
league British Basketball League
2013/14: 12th place

The Birmingham Knights are a professional basketball team from Birmingham , England . Founded in 2011 after a successful application as a new franchise in the closed professional league British Basketball League (BBL), they will start playing for the 2013/14 season in September 2013. The professional basketball in Birmingham in the BBL is based on the predecessor clubs Birmingham Bullets (1990 to 2006) and Team Birmingham Panthers (2007/08), which previously represented the city in the BBL.

history

Birmingham Bullets (1974 to 2006)

The Bullets were originally founded in Coventry in 1974 and moved in 1980 to Birmingham, 40 km away, where they were founding members of the closed professional league BBL as Bullets in 1987 together with 14 other teams. In the following three seasons, in which the league shrank to nine teams, they did not participate in the game operations of the BBL before returning in 1991. Then they qualified ten times in a row for the play-offs for the championship. 1996 and 1998 you won the championship play-offs with a team that included Tony Dorsey , " Most Valuable Player " (MVP) of the BBL 1996. 2000 you lost the final of the play-offs against the Manchester Giants , where Tony Dorsey, who switched to the Giants and who had briefly played in the German basketball league for Steiner Bayreuth at the beginning of the 1996/97 season , was again MVP. Then the star of the Bullets sank and in 2002 you could not qualify for the play-offs of the best eight teams for the first time in the then twelve-team BBL. Two years later they had a disastrous season and only scored two wins in 36 games this season. Already shortly before the end in terms of sport and economy, they held out for another two years, in each of which they had the worst sporting record of all participating teams, before they had to declare bankruptcy in 2006 and stop playing.

Birmingham Panthers (2007 to 2008)

After the Wolves from Worcester, 50 km away , took over the place of the Bullets in the BBL in 2006, a group around the former assistant coach of the Bullets Herman Wilson found themselves ready with the local basketball team of the Birmingham Athletics , also as Aston Athletics announced after the venue Aston Events Center to make a fresh attempt at a BBL franchise. Similar to the renaming of the Washington Wizards in the US professional league NBA , however, the club name "Bullets" was not continued and, after a successful application for membership in 2007, played under the name Team Birmingham Panthers in the 2007/08 season in memory of the former franchise Doncaster Panthers .

The 2007/08 season was overshadowed by the search for a suitable venue, as the Aston Events Center was felt to be insufficient. After all, you played in Walsall Campus Sports Center of the University of Wolverhampton km in 20 remote Wolverhampton . Two games were also played in the TCAT Arena at Telford College of Arts and Technology and there was even contemplation of relocating the franchise to Telford, just under 50 km away . Ultimately, however, the lack of sporting success with only six wins in 33 games and last place in the final table contributed to a lack of audience interest and a lack of support from sponsors, which led to a new BBL franchise in Birmingham after the end of the 2007/08 season led. In the 2008/09 season, a team in the English Basketball League (EBL) Division 2 went under the name Panthers.

Birmingham Knights (since 2011)

A group of investors around Oaks Consultancy Ltd. In 2011 Solihull successfully applied for membership in the BBL for a new franchise in the BBL from Birmingham. The start of match operations was planned for the 2012/13 season, but was then finally postponed to the 2013/14 season. The Knights are expected to play their first games in the BBL in September 2013. The Birmingham Aces , whose men's team play in EBL Division 3, should act as the foundation for the professional team . The first season ended in a sporting oath of revelation when they did not win a single out of 33 season games.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ross Alexander: Meet the new 'Birmingham Knights'. (No longer available online.) Birmingham Knights, May 15, 2013, archived from the original on June 9, 2013 ; accessed on May 23, 2013 (English, media info). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / birminghamknights.co.uk