Wonju DB Promy

The Wonju DB Promy is a professional basketball club in the Korean Basketball League (KBL), located in the city of Wonju. From its founding in 1996, the team has always been based in its home province of Gangwon. It has the rare distinction of being the only team in the KBL to have never changed its hometown despite changing names and corporate sponsors several times. Due to this long-standing relationship with the city of Wonju, the team enjoys a particularly strong local fanbase and is Gangwon Province's oldest sports team. History Pre-KBL era Wonju DB Promy traces its origins to the basketball team founded by Naray Telecom in 1996. It was one of several basketball teams started by corporate companies hoping to take advantage of the "basketball craze" taking place during the early to mid-1990s. By then, the Korean Basketball Association was starting to organize a professional league. Prior to 1997, domestic basketball was an amateur sport and all teams, whether sponsored by a corporate company or university, participated in the National Basketball Festival (Korean: 농구대잔치) competition. The Naray team was already based in Wonju and it was agreed that the team would remain there with the start of the new professional Korean Basketball League (KBL). Naray Telecom bought over Korea Development Bank's basketball team. The KDB had opted out of registering its basketball team as a professional sports team. Although Naray took in some of its players, it did not inherit the legacy of the former team. The KDB team had been started during the 1950s, not long after the Korean War ended. The Industrial Bank of Korea likewise had sold its basketball team that year, and its new corporate sponsor restarted the team as Gwangju Nasan Flamans. No KBL team has been sponsored by a domestic financial institution or bank ever since.