It would have been little surprise if last summer proved the last that British basketball heard of Lenz Balan and the London Lions.
CEO Balan was a vice-president at former owner 777 Partners, whose now notorious collapse led to the club falling into administration and the league going bust almost a year ago and, for some onlookers, therefore culpable for the crisis that gripped the game and its biggest team.
Instead of scurrying away, however, the American helped to rescue the London Lions by finding deep-pocketed new owners, Tesonet, and playing a part in establishing Super League Basketball, a new competition run by its clubs.
Improbably given that they were nearly liquidated 12 months ago and lost their best-paid stars, the Lions topped the SLB table and, although they lost in the play-off semi-finals at the weekend, have thrived rather than merely survived in this new era.
With plans also afoot for their own, purpose-built arena, Balan has begun to make good on his own resolution to right the wrongs of the past. And in his first major interview since that turbulent summer, he opens up on the criticism he received and the sense of duty he feels.
“I understand what people’s issues are, even though I felt like I did everything I could to do what’s best for the club. It’s very weird – I don’t really feel like a lot of the stuff that happened was my fault, but I do feel responsible,” he tells City AM.
“I feel a sense of responsibility to the British basketball community, to the City of London. There are lots of things I could do to make more money. I’m in this because I believe in basketball as a potential great commercial opportunity, but also as an instrument for social change for communities that I really care about.
“And both the men’s and women’s teams, what they did last year [winning titles] was just overwhelming, in spite of all of everything else. I just didn’t want to give up on those people.
“I’ve made mistakes, we’ve made mistakes in the past. I’m doing everything I can to give back to the sport. I’ll continue to do it because I really love this club. I really care about the future of basketball in this country.
“I guess there’s some redemption, but the work’s not done until we’re playing in our own state of the art arena, and we’re playing against Real Madrid and Barcelona, and we’ve got kids all over the city playing basketball and having spaces to play.”
It is, he says, a relief to have stable owners in Tesonet, the Lithuanian tech incubator that spawned internet security brand Nord and co-owns Zalgiris Kaunas: “I’m not spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not we can make payrolls.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined Lenz Balan (left) for London Lions’ semi-final (Picture: GLA)
As well as basketball expertise, Tesonet has brought ambition – not least in its plans to build a new home for the London Lions in the capital, which promises to make the club far more sustainable and act as a much-needed elite player development hub.
“If you own a basketball team without having a venue, you’re just lighting money on fire,” Balan says. “We aim to play at the top European competition, and the minimum size arena required is 12-15,000. So we need to get those ticket sales in order to attract the best British talent and the best American talent so we can compete against Barcelona and Zalgiris and Real Madrid.”
Lenz Balan on BBF-SLB split and NBA Europe
The London Lions have backing for the project from the Mayor of London, with Sadiq Khan sitting alongside Balan at courtside for last Friday’s semi-final at the Copper Box. A feasibility study is the next step and a partner for that could be named within weeks.
But if progress at club level has been smooth, the league is again in turmoil and at loggerheads with the British Basketball Federation over its proposed sale of a licence to operate the competition to outside investors led by American Marshall Glickman.
“In the end, a league is nothing but its clubs. And my personal perspective is that every professional league in the world is owned and operated by its clubs,” Balan says. “My position on outside investment in the league is that that determination should be made by the clubs.”
Asked whether his faith in the BBF has been damaged, he offers an olive branch: “I think that the league doesn’t get reconstituted without the help of the BBF and without [chair] Chris Grant. And there are some really positive things that he’s done.
“The club’s perspective on this other thing is a separate matter. But at the end of the day, the basketball community is the basketball community. It’s not going to change. So we all have to come together at some point and hammer it out.”
The other iceberg for British basketball is the NBA’s plan to establish a European league, which may involve new franchise teams and promises to cause major upheaval across the continent.
“The only thing I can influence is doing my best to get the London Lions in a position to be in a top league. I can’t control what the NBA does, but people interested in European basketball has to be good for the London Lions,” he says.
“The London Lions are building something that is really unique in the European basketball landscape, that is connected to London culture, that is cool, and even though we’re not big yet it has value today, and I think it’ll have value to whatever European league that exists.”