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CSKA Moscow, 2007-08: The way they were
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Even though it finished on Sunday with a pre-season favorite on the winners' stand, the 2007-08 Euroleague was arguably less predictable than any edition of the continent's top competition all decade. The surprises started immediately after the regular season opening game back in the third week of October, and no major team was safe from them, especially in the Top 16, where both the defending champions and would-be Final Four hosts went down hard, while the Playoffs saw all but one series extended to the three-game limit. CSKA Moscow was not immune to the scares. It needed a buzzer-beater to avoid losing its first Top 16 game at home, then lost on a similar shot to start the playoffs, ending the club's 27-game home win streak in Moscow. Down by double-digits on the road after one quarter in Game 2 of the playoffs, CSKA was face-to-face with elimination. Needless to say, elimination lost. The very next quarter, CSKA won 11-27, and since then proved practically unstoppable, right through to the Euroleague title.
"I think this team has shown once more that it is built to win," CSKA forward Matjaz Smodis said during the on-court celebration in Madrid. "It has character."
Even before the new season opened, CSKA had expanded its horizons by easily winning two preseason games against opponents from other continents, Team China and the Sydney Kings, in the CBA-Euroleague Challenge near Shanghai before a new audience of hundreds of millions in China. CSKA also had the honor of starting the 50 Years of European Club basketball celebration with a 69-88 road win against Prokom Trefl Sopot in the Euroleague regular season opening game. Although he had 18 points in that first win, Smodis would get severely injured two weeks later, starting a string of key injuries. Starting center Aleksey Savrasenko, a stalwart for five seasons, follow with a shoulder injury that ended his season. Nonetheless, CSKA cemented its status as Group A leader with a seven-game win streak that included road wins against eventual Final Four teams Montepaschi Siena and Tau Ceramica. In fact, CSKA broke Tau's 30-game home winning streak, the longest one in Euroleague history, despite arriving to Vitoria without four of its top six players: Smodis, Savrasenko, Theo Papaloukas and Ramunas Siskauskas.
"I think that the streak of wins we had between late November and through December and January, without Smodis, Siskauskas and Papaloukas for many games, and of course without Savrasenko at all, was very, very important to us," CSKA head coach Ettore Messina said later. "Thankfully, the remaining veterans carried the team in those difficult moments."
Both those wins helped CSKA finish the group first with a 12-2 record, tied for the best of the regular season, thus entering the Top 16 as a top seed. Right away, however, CSKA faced trouble in its Top 16 home opener against Lottomatica Roma. CSKA had to rally from an 11-point deficit in little over 2 minutes to win on a fortuitous seven-meter running triple by Trajan Langdon. Only a road loss at Unicaja blemished the rest of its Top 16, but CSKA knew it had dodged a bullet to get homecourt advantage in the playoffs. The new round started with a shocker, however, as Olympiacos took Game 1 in Moscow, 74-76, on a buzzer-beater, breaking CSKA's 27-game winning streak in the worst moment. Then, in Game 2 in Athens, CSKA fell down by 27-15 after 10 minutes. This time, CSKA was not surprised, however. Indeed, CSKA regrouped and got a 73-83 road win behind 20 points from Siskauskas to return to Moscow. In Game 3, CSKA thrashed Olympiacos 81-56 and Siskauskas was the man again with 24 points. The victory put CSKA in the Final Four for a sixth consecutive season, extending a record it had set the previous season.
"For sure, it was a tough night when we lost against Olympiacos," point guard Nikos Zisis recounted later. "We lost the first game of the playoffs, lost it at home and lost the homecourt advantage we had been fighting for the whole season. And the difficult thing was to travel and play two days later in Athens a huge game that could cost us all our Final Four dreams. The team showed big character and personality to come back from the loss and especially to come back from a terrible first quarter in Athens, too."
The playoffs victory extended CSKA's record run of Final Four appearances to six consecutive years, two more than any other club. That record belongs individually two  both CSKA point guards, J.R. Holden and Theodoros Papaloukas, as well, at the same time that Savrasenko, though injured in mid-season, was on the roster for all six. Just making the Final Four has never been CSKA's goal, however. Once in Madrid, CSKA had more tests to pass, starting with its semifinal against Tau Ceramica, itself working on a four-game streak of Final Four appearances. This time, Tau went up by eight points at halftime, but CSKA slowly reeled in the game after the break and survived with a difficult 79-83 victory. Siskauskas and David Andersen each had 16 points in the semifinal. That set up a head-to-head showdown in the final of eternal rivals at the top of Europe competition: Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv vs. CSKA in a replay of their 2006 title game. The first half was a classic heavyweight fight, with 8 ties and 9 lead changes on the way to a 41-42 score at the break as Trajan Langdon hit 4 of 4 three-pointers for CSKA. After that, his team went about proving its case beyond doubt. Holden and Andersen combined on 13 points to open up a double-digit third-quarter lead, while Siskauskas and Smodis picked up the thread with triples early in the fourth that settled the matter. CSKA's defense handled the rest until Messina, whose brother died just before the playoffs, raced away from the bench with 10 seconds left to embrace his family for some moments before returning to celebrate with his players. The 77-91 final score tied the third-biggest title-game victory margin in the 30-year Final Four era and gave CSKA its second Euroleague title in three years and its sixth overall.
"Looking from the outside you don't really realize how difficult it's been the past year for Coach Messina," Langdon, the Final Four MVP, said afterward. "On the court and in the locker room, we just stayed together. And he pushed us. There were times when we did not play good basketball. But I think we played one of the better games of the year. And the coach always had the confidence in us and the team appreciates that confidence."
To finish a season that celebrated the 50 Years of European Club Basketball anniversary, the final victory left CSKA holding a piece of history: exclusive possession of second place on the all-time list of continental titles-holders. Having previously won the competition in 1961, 1963, 1969, 1971 and 2006, CSKA now ranks second with six European crowns. That's two behind Real Madrid's top total of eight and one ahead of both Varese and  Maccabi. The victory also meant a step forward in the record books for Messina, who won his fourth Euroleague title, tying for second place all-time with legendary coaches Pedro Ferrandiz, Alexander Gomelskiy and Bozidar Maljkovic. Panathinaikos head coach Zeljko Obradovic tops the list with six continental trophies. Smodis, meanwhile, lifted his third Euroleague title, adding him to a list of 27 players with as many - including legends like Toni Kukoc, Dejan Bodiroga, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Juan Antonio Corbalan, Bob Morse, Anthony Parker, Manuel Raga and Walter Szczerbiak, who were all honored during Final Four weekend. Only 10 players have more than three continental titles. Siskauskas, meanwhile, became the third player to win consecutive Euroleague titles with different teams, as he lifted the competition trophy with Panathinaikos in 2007. Only Bodiroga (Panathinaikos 2002 and Barcelona 2003) and Jasikevicius (Barcelona 2003 and Maccabi 2004) had done that in the past. Siskauskas, however, is the first to do so in his first seasons on two different teams. The victory was accompanied by the news, announced just prior to tipoff, that despite rumors to the contrary, Messina would rejoin the team for at least one more season, raising the possibility of further history in CSKA's future.
"It has a special meaning to be champion with 50 years of Euroleague being remembered," Smodis said right before the trophy ceremony. "The champs of all-time watching makes it even better, as well as beating Maccabi in the final, and that rivalry being a classic. Even if you were writing a film, you could not make a better script. This has gone beyond perfect."
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