From Beirut derby to Zain foes, domestic rivalries crowd FIBA WASL Season 2 Semis

BEIRUT (Lebanon) - Muharraq's win over Shabab Al Ahli-Dubai on Monday night to reach the FIBA WASL-Gulf League Semi-Finals only made things all the more interesting this season.

They forged an all-Bahraini clash with defending league champions Manama, which makes the Sub-Zone Leagues Semis picture crowded with long-standing domestic rivalries.

The other Gulf League Semis bracket will feature reigning sub-zone kings Kuwait Club and Kazma in a battle between two of Kuwait's esteemed clubs. While in the West Asia League Semis, one series will pit Al Riyadi and Sagesse in another chapter of their Beirut derby.

It's actually nothing new in the pan-regional competition. It could be recalled that local rivals locked horns in the West Asia Semis back in the league's inaugural season.

Back then, Al Riyadi took on Beirut Club in a rematch of the 2022 Lebanese Basketball Championship Finals, while Shahrdary Gorgan and ZobAhan Isfahan met in the other bracket in another meeting between 2022 Iranian Basketball Super League Finals protagonists.

Al Riyadi and Gorgan dispatched their respective foes, with the former eventually winning the sub-zone crown. Now, the reigning West Asia League champs find themselves in a Semis encounter against their biggest rival, which swept Al Wahda in the Qualification to Semis.

They've faced countless times domestically, but this will be the first time that they're playing against one another in FIBA WASL. And who knows, looking at the bigger picture, we may even see them bring their rivalry to a stage as huge as the Basketball Champions League Asia.

BCL Asia is formerly known as the FIBA Asia Champions Cup. So, it would be intriguing to see if two of the winningest teams in Champions Cup history - Sagesse has the most titles with three while Al Riyadi has two - could soon write their names in the new league's annals.

But then, all that will depend on how far will each of them can go in FIBA WASL, whose champion and runner-up by season's end will head into BCL Asia.

Not to be overshadowed in the upcoming Sub-Zone Leagues Semis, of course, are the Manama-Muharraq affair in a clash of Bahraini heavyweights.

Much of the attention will be on the blue-and-red given their stature as the defending FIBA WASL champions, but they sure aren't looking too far ahead. Standing in their bid of going back-to-back are foes so familiar to them. - hungry as well to exact vengeance.

Manama swept Muharraq in the 2022-23 Zain Basketball League Finals, 3-0, and so the Gulf Semis are an opportunity for the latter to get back on the undefeated crew, who was one of the first teams to reach the sub-zone Semis after going 6-0 in the Group Phase.

It's the same case for Kazma in facing Kuwait Club in the other Semis bracket, although what they have gone through against the Kuwaiti Division 1 Basketball League's most successful team with 14 national championships could arguably be more painful.

Since beating Kuwait Club for the crown in 2012, Kazma have yet to repeat. They've reached the Division 1 Finals in the last three seasons, but lost against Kuwait Club in all those trips.

That's why it should no longer come as a surprise if Kazma comes out swinging right in their series opener - the same should go to the other teams that are tired of being on the losing end and would want a new narrative to be written this time in FIBA WASL.

FIBA