Basketball: one year after “Wembamania”, Boulogne-Levallois relegated to Pro B

Less than a year after reaching the final of the French basketball championship and filling Roland-Garros with Victor Wembanyama, Boulogne-Levallois is certain to be relegated to the second division, even before the end of a nightmare season.

The Metropolitans 92, who only won four matches in 28 days before hosting Chalon-sur-Saône on Sunday evening, will return to Pro B fifteen years after having left it (under the name of Paris-Levallois), a descent to which they can no longer escape since Roanne's 82-69 victory against Cholet on Sunday. However, it is not even certain that they will participate since there is the threat of filing for bankruptcy, after they already delayed, last summer, in confirming their commitment to the Elite.

After the departure of Victor Wembanyama, No. 1 in the NBA draft last year, but also of Bilal Coulibaly (chosen in seventh position), the club only had one player left under contract at the end of the 2022-2023 season and was forced to hastily build a squad. The Mets 92 also lost their director of sports operations Alain Weisz last summer, who retired, and their coach Vincent Collet, who wanted to devote himself fully to the French team before the Olympic Games.

Also readBasketball: “disaster”, “cold shower”, “incompetence”… In Boulogne-Levallois, desolation after Wembanyama

The Blues coach was replaced by Laurent Foirest, dismissed at the end of November and succeeded by his deputy Nebojsa Bogavac, who asked less than a month later to be released and was replaced by Jean-Paul Besson, another assistant.

To attract experienced players into their nets at the last moment, then try to change the course of a season that has gotten off to a bad start (eight defeats to begin with), the Metropolitains 92 have included release clauses in their contracts, activated by certain players as soon as A good opportunity presented itself. Like the American leader Jordan Theodore, who left the club in the middle of training at the end of January to join a Euroleague team (Vitoria), or Alen Omic, pivot who returned to the country (Ljubljana) a week later when he was N. 1 in the championship in the evaluation.

This waltz of the players (16 professional contracts registered during the season, the maximum authorized) was detrimental and even almost led the club to forfeit, against Monaco on February 11, due to not being able to present a squad composed of 10 professional contracts approved as required by the regulations of the National Basketball League (LNB).

“Since the off-season, I think that the management of the Metropolitans 92 is really disastrous (...). It lacked a real pilot on board, a real guideline,” commented, in an interview with the specialized site BeBasket, the president of the LNB Philippe Ausseur. The question now is whether the Mets will have a driver next season.