Basketball is a minor sport in England. As of the 2006-07 season the top level league is the ten team British Basketball League and second league is the twelve team English Basketball League. The teams are professional or semi-professional but have modest resources. Great Britain men's national basketball team, which was formed by the national basketball organisations of England, Scotland and Wales on 1 December 2005, have not achieved any major success yet. Despite that, the qualification for the 2009 European basketball championship, after 28 years of absence from any major international basketball event for any of the Great Britain's countries' national teams, has marked Great Britain as one of the uprising basketball nations in Europe.
On 13 March 2011, Fiba voted 17-3 in favour of Great Britain receiving their host nation spot at the 2012 Olympic games with one condition, they have until 30 June 2012 to decide on whether to merge the three nations that make up the team or disband after the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.[11] At Eurobasket 2011 Great Britain recorded their first Eurobasket win en route to a 2–3 record, good enough for 13th in the first 24 team Eurobasket tournament.