There was a time, in the late 90s, when Lebanese basketball could do no wrong. Lebanese teams – brimming with home-grown talent and the odd high-profile import – beat everyone in sight, games were shown on prime-time TV and crowds of enthusiastic fans blocked streets for hours, celebrating victory after victory. Lebanon appeared to have found its national sport and the sponsors could not get their checkbooks out fast enough. That was then. Today, the clubs, deserted by their sponsors, are propped up by wealthy patrons, marred by scandals, feuds and crises. The recession did not help, but when Antoine Choueiry, advertising mogul and the so-called “Godfather of Basketball,” recently announced his retirement from the presidency of Sagesse and indeed from the sport in general, basketball’s last hope appeared to have hung up his shirt. So what went wrong and what now for the sport that promised so much? A
