Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

My entry this week is not a historic tale per se, but the man I will take about is historic alright. His name is Zelimir "Zeljko" Obradovic. He became a Euroleague champion for a record eighth time in his 19-year coaching career last week, after winning the 2011 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four in Barcelona with clear superiority over Montepaschi Siena, in the semifinals, and Maccabi Electra, in the title game. Aside from his eight European crowns with four different teams, Obradovic has also won two Saporta Cups, which was the second-highest European competition some years ago. First, he won it with Real Madrid in 1997 against Mash Verona by 78-64 with a team featuring Dejan Bodiroga, Alberto Herreros and Joe Arlauckas just to name a few. In 1999, he won it again with Benetton Treviso against Pamesa Valencia by 64-60. The Benetton team featured Riccardo Pittis, Marcelo Nicola, Denis Marconato and Zeljko Rebraca among others. If European basketball awarded rings for the titles, Obradovic would have run out of fingers by now!

I admit that today's entry is a difficult challenge because almost everything is already known about Obradovic. I have known him for more than 30 years since his start as a player and, of course, as a coach. I have witnessed live nine out of his ten triumphs in Europe but despite... more

The only European to ever win both the Euroleague and NCAA titles, Jiri "George" Zidek has been a collaborator with Euroleague.net and Euroleague.TV since the 2006 Final Four in his native Czech Republic. Big George, who won the Euroleague with Zalgiris Kaunas in 1999, continues as a color analyst of Euroleague games for Czech TV, not to mention for Euroleague.TV, where he has worked the last three Final Fours. In this blog, he offers analysis from an ex-champ's point of view on what games and players are impressing him most!

Yes, those would be the right words for what's happening in all of our minds – be it players, coaches, managements, fans or media. I feel sure that all of us are counting down seconds for the games to start. After a great regular season and Top 16 we witnessed equally captivating playoffs that kept most of us glued to our Euroleague.TV accounts. Three teams managed to turn the tables and snatch away home court advantage from better-seeded clubs to earn their right to travel to Barcelona. It was a season of surprises, with many teams feeling their chance to lift the trophy; a season in which devotion feels to be the fitting motto for the battles that we have witnessed on the courts. The waiting game is approaching its end, so the final chapter can be played out this weekend in Barcelona with the crowning of a new champion on Sunday. Going back to Prague in 2006, when I first got the chance to work as analyst for Euroleague.net, Final Fours have featured superb basketball, the true cherry on the Euroleague cake. There is no reason to expect anything less this season!

Panathinaikos vs. Montepaschi Siena

Previewing the first semifinal, I must go back to the playoffs, because both... more

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi, built for the 1992 Olympic Games, this week hosts the Euroleague Final Four for the third time. The previous two will always remain in the memories of Kinder Bologna, F.C. Barcelona and their fans because Palau Sant Jordi is where both teams won their first titles in Europe’s premier competition.

The 1997-98 Euroleague season consisted of 24 teams from 12 countries. Spain, Italy, Greece and France had three teams each; Germany, Russia, Turkey and Croatia two each; and Belgium, Slovenia, Israel and Yugoslavia one each. In the first phase, the teams were divided into four groups of six teams. All teams advanced to the second phase forming new groups matching the first three teams of a group with the last three from another. The teams that finished last in the new groups would lose a berth for their country in the next season's competition. After the first two phases and before the playoffs, the biggest surprise was to be found in Group G, where Limoges (6-10) and Real Madrid (7-9), the European champs of 1993 and 1995 respectively, were eliminated. Benetton Treviso (12-4), CSKA Moscow and PAOK Thessaloniki (12-7 each) and Estudiantes Madrid (8-8) were ahead of them. There were no major surprises in the other three groups.

In the three-game series of the eighthfinals, CSKA eliminated FC... more

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

The return of Real Madrid to the Final Four after 15 years and one more since its last Euroleague title is a more than apt reason to look back at the European history of the winningest club in the competition with eight crowns. Real Madrid is at the top of the list of 20 teams that have won the title at least once. After Madrid we find CSKA Moscow with six titles; Ignis Varese and Panathinaikos with five each; Maccabi Tel Aviv with 4+1 (counting the SuproLeague triumph in 2000-01); ASK Riga, Olimpia Milano and Jugoplastika with three each; Cibona, Cantu and FC Barcelona with two each, Virtus Bologna at 1+1 (counting the Euroleague title in 2000-01) and the teams with one title each: Dinamo Tbilisi, Bosna Sarajevio, Roma, Partizan, Limoges, Joventut, Olympiacos and Zalgiris.

Four finals in a row

Real Madrid has a special place in the history of the Champions Cup/Euroleague, not only because it has won most titles than anyone else. Madrid was the first team from Western Europe that tried and then managed to break the supremacy of Soviet teams in the first six editions of the competition. Real Madrid had played in the first edition of the competition in 1958, but it took it four years to get to its first final. In the first season, Real Madrid had to withdraw from the competition in the semis because... more