Euroleague

The EuroLeague (or Turkish Airlines EuroLeague) is the top European basketball competition. The competition is organized by Euroleague Basketball since the 2000-2001 season (before that, the top competition called European Champions Cup was organized by FIBA).

Starting from the 2015-2016 season, EuroLeague changed it’s format and implemented a 16 team regular season, where each team plays each other twice (home and away). The top 8 teams advance to the Playoffs, the quarterfinals being played in a best-of-five series format. The winners of the quarterfinals series qualify to the Final 4.

Currently there are 11 teams that have a 10 year license to play in the EuroLeague (these are Anadolu Efes, Baskonia, CSKA Moscow, FC Barcelona, Fenerbahce, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Olimpia Milano, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Real Madrid, Zalgiris Kaunas ). The remaining 5 spots in the regular season are filled with the EuroCup champion, Adriatic league champion, German league champion and wild cards (based on the sporting value of the selected club, but also it’s financial power and infrastructure).

The most successful team in the history of the EuroLeague is Real Madrid, with 10 titles won (Real Madrid is currently also the defending champion, having won the 2018 EuroLeague title by defeating Fenerbahce in the final).

The all-time top scorer of the EuroLeague is the recently retired Juan Carlos Navarro.  FC Barcelona’s legendary player scored 4,152 points in his EuroLeague carrier. The best points per game average record is held by the late Alphonso Ford (the EuroLeague best scorer award is also named after the American player).

The all-time most successful coach in EuroLeague is the current coach of Fenerbahce Istanbul, Serbian legend Zeljko Obradovic, who won 9 titles as head coach with 5 different teams (Partizan Belgrade, Joventut Badalona, Real Madrid, Panathinaikos and Fenerbahce).