World-renowned as a master teacher of basketball, Aito Garcia Reneses holds a place as one of the most prestigious coaches in Europe. He won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics to go with a ULEB Cup, two Korac Cups, nine Spanish Leagues and five Spanish Cup titles, just to name a few of his accomplishments in almost four decades on the benches of basketball powers like FC Barcelona, Joventut Badalona and Unicaja. Aito, as everyone in European basketball knows him, is also a regular contributor to the Mastermind Coaching Seminars of the Euroleague Basketball Institute. He joins Euroleague.net to give his coachs point of view and analysis on Turkish Airlines Euroleague games.

Never in my sports career have I talked about favorites. When I coach a smaller team, it doesn't matter, and in fact I like it, if we are considered favorites, because that helps to increase ambition. However, when the team I am coaching is bigger, it worries me when the favorite label is stuck on us because often it causes some members of the team to freeze. On the other hand, I was never as skilled as others in hanging the label of favorite on the rival teams. It's not totally true, but while referring to aspects like the one we are commenting right now, in private I used to say: "FAVORITES NEVER WIN."

Consider the two teams that landed at the Final Four in Istanbul as favorites: FC Barcelona Regal lost in the semis and CSKA Moscow almost fell in the first game to Panathinaikos. While the Barcelonans and Muscovites reached the Final Four with hardly any losses during the season, the Greek teams arrived in Istanbul with several defeats each. The best game in Istanbul, for me, was the one...

Euroleague.net's editorial director, Frank Lawlor, has spent most of his career as a basketball journalist in Europe and his native United States, writing about and interviewing the top players in the world on both continents for more than two decades. In terms of practical basketball experience, he was a head coach in the Spanish second division for one fortuitous season in the late 1990s. Frank's blog will draw on all that background to enhance the Turkish Airlines Euroleague experience for you, the fans.

The same words kept echoing into the magic Istanbul night.

"Incredible!"

"Unbelievable!"

Just as the same text message ricocheted around the continent.

"Wow!"

And the same questions were repeated at the Efes Champions Party, by people with no voices left, trying to shout above the Turkish dance music wafting up toward the Bosphorous Bridge to Asia.

"Are we dreaming?"

"Did that really happen?"

"Can you believe it?"

The answer: only if you believe in miracles. That's almost not too strong a word for how Olympiacos changed basketball history on Sunday.

Losing by 19 points with 12 minutes to play in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague title game, nobody but nobody thought the Reds could do much more than avoid embarrasment against CSKA Moscow.

They had missed 10 out of 20 free throws during the game's first 28 minutes and only three Olympiaccos players - three! - had scored in the game until then: Vassilis Spanoulis, Kostas Papanikolaou and Pero Antic. Worst of all, with the...

Basketball junkie Yarone Arbel has been traveling the globe to watch games for almost a decade. He works as an analyst for official websites of the top competitions and events in European basketball. He also uses his experience and broad network of connections to provide consulting and scouting services for clubs at all levels.

There was only one team before that produced, on a consistent basis, comebacks such as the one Olympiacos did on Sunday night. It was the Greek national team between 2005 and 2007, which time after time managed to find the way to come back from the grave and somehow win games. Probably it wasn't a coincidence the greatest comeback in Euroleague finals was done by a Greek team. And by saying "Greek", I mean that it was fully displayed on the floor and in the boxscore. Out of the 62 points scored by Olympiacos, 52 were generated by Greek players. Pero Antic scored 7 and Marko Keselj added 3. The three Americans went scoreless, Martynas Gecevicius didn't play. The rest was 100-percent pure Greek basketball.

In Olympiacos fashion

It looks like Olympiacos has found the ingredients to win the most prestigious trophy in European basketball. This is the second Euroleague title for Olympiacos. The first was in 1997 and the coach back then was the same Duda Ivkovic. Now Ivkovic is the oldest coach ever to win the title, but his memories from 1997 certainly didn't hurt his team to have the confidence to believe. When it won the title 15 years ago, Olympiacos finished the first group stage with a 5-5 record and also had to go through the playoffs without home court...

Just about everyone expected 2011 to be FC Barcelona Regal's year to repeat as champion in front of its hometown fans. Those expectations were not unusual, especially considering how dominant Barcelona had been the previous season and for most of this one. However, It took a historic Euroleague team, Panathinaikos, to prevent any hope of that happening by eliminating Barcelona in the playoffs.

In the end, we were treated to another classic finals matchup between Maccabi Electra and Panathinaikos – the two most successful Euroleague team since the turn of the century. Maccabi played an exciting brand of basketball under Coach David Blatt that season. I cannot recall any team that was so focused and capable of blowing their opponents out and not letting up at all in the manner that the Israeli champs did that season. They fought and battled for every single possession.

Maccabi pressured and aggressively trapped the ball all over the court with electrifying guards Jeremy Pargo and Doron Perkins leading the way. It was an entertaining team to watch as it played uptempo and had the powerful All-Euroleague center Sofoklis Schortsanitis under the basket playing the best ball of his career. Chuck Eidson was the glue that held everything together as he really did do...