Heroes Den Bosch is a Dutch professional basketball club based in 's-Hertogenbosch. The club plays in the Dutch Basketball League, the top basketball division in the Netherlands, since 1972. Founded as EBBC in 1951, the club would have several sponsored names the following decades. Den Bosch has won a record sixteen Dutch championships as well as seven NBB Cup titles. The team has also been a regular at European competitions. Heroes plays their home games at the Maaspoort, which has a capacity of 2,700 people.
History
On 18 October 1952, Eerste Bossche Basketball Club was founded by Cees Vossen, Tom van der Leur, Hans van Oorschot and Frans van de Wiel. In 1962, Den Bosch played in the top division Eredivisiefor the first time, but not very successful. Subsequently the team was relegated again. In 1979, EBBC won its first title. In 1980, the team became Nashua Den Bosch after its new main sponsor. Its increased budget led to six consecutive Dutch titles between 1982 and 1987.
EiffelTowers (2005–2013)
Decades later, in June 2005, Den Bosch merged with EiffelTowers Nijmegen to form EiffelTowers Den Bosch. Following the merger the club had one of the largest budgets in the Netherlands, and with that they were able to attract high-quality players. In their first season they had immediate success by winning the Dutch League title. The year after that EiffelTowers The Bosch would win the title again after a clean sweep against the Matrixx Magixx, after losing only four games in the regular season. The two following years, Den Bosch reached the finals, but lost twice to Amsterdam. In 2012, EiffelTowers won its fifteenth Dutch championship, after beating ZZ Leiden 1–4 in a best-of-seven-series.
SPM Shoeters (2013–2016)
After 13 years playing as the EiffelTowers, the club changed its name to SPM Shoeters in 2013. Along with the name change the club changed the team colors to black, after playing in red since 2000. In the 2014–15 season, Shoeters won its sixteenth DBL championship after Donar was beaten 4–1 in the Finals. The team also performed excellently in the EuroChallenge that season, reaching the Top 16. Star of the season for Den Bosch was Brandyn Curry, who was named DBL Playoffs MVP. After the 2015–16 season, it was revealed that Shoeters was dealing with serious financial problems which had the team on the edge of bankruptcy.
In October 2016, the team was bought by Triple Double BV, a sports marketing enterprise. Owner of the company Bob van Oosterhout took over the club which was no longer in danger of dissolution. On 6 November 2016, Den Bosch found a new main sponsor and subsequently was named New Heroes Basketball. In its first season as New Heroes, the club finished fourth in the DBL and was swept by Donar in the semi-finals. In the 2017–18 season, Croatian coach Silvano Poropat signed a two-year contract. Under Poropat, Heroes finished fourth once again but was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Rotterdam Basketbal. Following the disappointing season, Poropat and Heroes parted ways. On 31 May 2018, Kees Akerboom Jr. announced his retirement at age 34. Akerboom, who played 11 seasons for the club, had his jersey number 12 retired. For the 2018–19 season, Ivica Skelin was appointed as head coach. This season, ew Heroes played in the FIBA Europe Cup after a European absence of 3 years. In Group D, Heroes had a 3–3 record and finished in third place. In the DBL playoffs, Den Bosch was once again eliminated in the semifinals, this time by Landstede.
Heroes Den Bosch (2019–present)
On 21 August 2019, the club announced it was changing its name to Heroes Den Bosch and it is not planning to change the club name anymore. In June, Heroes signed Jean-Marc Jaumin as its new head coach.
Sponsorship names
Due to sponsorship reasons, Heroes Den Bosch has known a lot of names over the years:
