Hey,

Busy couple of weeks with our first major finals events of the season - Birmingham last weekend and Manchester the weekend before, all while trying to get summer 2023 dates locked in!

This week's 3-pointer:

🏆 BBL/WBBL Cup Finals in Birmingham

It was a London Lions double in Birmingham last weekend, as the women dominated Leicester behind an MVP performance from Holly Winterburn, while the men also held off Leicester behind a 23-point outing from Sam Dekker. There's been a lot of talk about whether or not London's dominance in the WBBL is good for the league - but as Holly said in the post-game presser; it's up to everyone to come and join them. We should not be bringing down the level anywhere - the aspiration should always be to be as good as possible. We had a similar conversation with Dekker and Ovie Soko in the men's presser - more to come on that as I try to find some time to write it up!

🏆 NBL Cup Finals in Manchester

The first finals event of the season took place the weekend before last in Manchester. Manchester Magic and Mystics did a double in the U16 boys and U16 girls, London Elite won their first ever national title in the U18 men, while Ipswich avenged a loss to CoLA last year in the U18 Women, and TVC claimed the Women's and Hemel Storm took the Men's National Cup behind a 41-point outing from Taylor Johnson.

🦁 Lions in Europe

The London Lions' EuroCup Women play-off campaign came to an end - after defeating Villeneuve in the opener in London, they went down 77-64 in France to lose 148-141 on aggregate. Meanwhile, British basketball fans got an insight into Israeli basketball culture when Hapoel Tel Aviv fans came to Wembley a few weeks back as their side took down London in a heartbreaking loss for the hosts. It was quite something to see 1500 travelling fans going nuts from opening tip to the final buzzer! Lions were downed in Montenegro last night after a slow start to drop to 5-8.

Elsewhere, the WBBL Trophy first round took place in Essex - always super convenient to have all teams in one place for games - credit to the University of Essex for hosting the weekend and upping the levels for game day experience, the BBC has announced a nine-game broadcast deal with the NBA, and overseas, titles for both DLO and Gabby Nikitinaite.

That wraps up another drop, as always, hit reply with any thoughts, questions or anything else!

With gratitude,

Sam