2025-26 BC Dubai
089 · 2026-03-07 · medium
It's somewhere around that typical time of year, when we check in on one of the first basketball franchises anywhere in the world to plonk down a big suitcase of money on a conference room table and buy their way into a top circuit. BC Dubai was founded in 2023, joined the post-Yugoslavian ABA League in 2024, and is currently in first place with a 16-1 record against teams like SC Derby and Ikogea – who have to fly 12 hours RT for road games there. In their debut EuroLeague season, BCD is in 11th place at 15-14, a whisper away from the play-in zone, toiling for half-capacity expat crowds in the blue glow of the stylish 16,000-seat Coca-Cola Arena. They... wait, hold on, the Americans did what? That thing that's been off the table for 50 years because it would rip the lid off the Hellmouth and turn into a multi-generational disaster? Wow, I didn't know that, you're telling me for the first time. When Iran sent dumb munitions towards soft targets in the United Arab Emirates last week, an eventuality that has its own entire insurance sector there, the main international airport was shut down indefinitely due to drone damage. BC Dubai arranged private-jet exit flights for any and all EuroLeague players stranded in the city, which was probably the least they could do, and moved house to Bosnia for the remainder of the 2025-26 season. This now means that three of the EuroLeague's 20 clubs are now playing their home games at neutral sites (the two Tel Aviv teams are the others) because of bomb danger, and this is after three western Russian teams were booted out in 2022. Middle-aged war nerds and Swifter Higher readers might appreciate the choice of Sarajevo's Zetra Arena, a building where the original seats were removed three decades ago to make coffin boards. The only sensible reaction to international conflict is to stay non-aligned and as far away from it as possible; if you've ever spent any time in a place where there was even a 0.001 percent chance of getting hit with a missile while you slept, you're fully aware how mentally batshit insane that will make you... and you're likely not an American. There's nothing I can do to alter the mindset of anyone who thinks this adventure is a good idea, even with the tiniest little "nuclear" caveat, and isn't this what the CIA is supposed to be for? But I do reserve the right not to take them/you seriously.