This is a historic EuroLeague season, the twenty-fifth since its creation. Since it returned to the competition (19 appearances), Olimpia has played in one Final Four and has reached the playoffs twice, all in the last ten years. The formar has not changed compared to last year: the top six teams will qualify for the playoffs; the teams that finish between seventh and tenth place will compete for the last two places through the play-in tournament. The last eight will end the season after 34 rounds. The only new team is Paris Basketball, qualified by winning the Eurocup, which brings the number of French teams to three. This is an absolute debut for the French capital city. CSKA Moscow is still out for known reasons, while 12 teams have been admitted permanently, including Olimpia; two teams were inherited at different times from the Eurocup (AS Monaco and Paris Basketball) and the other four enjoy a wild-card (the two Belgrade teams; Virtus Bologna; Alba Berlin). Maccabi Tel Aviv, at least initially, will play their home games in Belgrade. This year too there will be a break, in February in conjunction with the national team window (there will however be no break for the FIBA window in November). There are eight weeks with two consecutive EuroLeague rounds.
COACHES – Four out of 18 coaches are new compared to how last season ended, namely Joan Penarroya at Barcelona (he had started last season in Vitoria), Pablo Laso who moved from Bayern to Vitoria, and Gordon Herbert, a World Cup winner with Germany , who will coach Bayern. Tiago Splitter debuts as coach with Paris Basketball. For Coach Ettore Messina this is the sixth season at Olimpia Milan. His EuroLeague record is 314-158; 369-183 considering the seasons in which the top international competition was governed by FIBA.
ARENAS – Last year Villeurbanne inaugurated its new arena in Lyon adjacent to the football stadium. This year it is Bayern Munich’s turn to move from the old Olympic building to a new, ultra-modern facility which will be opened this week for the Real Madrid games. In terms of attendance, Olimpia has just finished a record season with an average of 10,300 spectators per game.
PLAYERS – 48 players moved from one EuroLeague team to another including four of the top 15 in average rating last season namely Wade Baldwin (from Maccabi to Fenerbahce), Keenan Evans (from Zalgiris to Olympiacos), Josh Nebo (from Maccabi to Milan) and Serge Ibaka (from Bayern to Real Madrid). 14 out of 48 were among the top 50 and among these tere is Zach LeDay, from Partizan to Olimpia. 10 players from the top 100 left the League, some simply following their own team (Valencia, which participates in the Eurocup, will still have Chris Jones and Semi Ojeleye and also signed Matt Costello from Vitoria), PJ Dozier went to the NBA from Partizan and Johannes Thiemann moved to Japan from Alba. There are 50 players who will play the EuroLeague but were not part of it a year ago. Of these 50, only about ten are not rookies. The most sensational return is that of Sasha Vezenkov from the NBA to Olympiacos. But it is also worth mentioning Boban Marjanovic who after a long NBA career returns to the EuroLeague, at Fenerbahce. In addition to them, the two Turks, Furkan Korkmaz (AS Monaco) and Cedi Osman (Panathinaikos), are worth mentioning, whose experience in the EuroLeague was however very short. Among the rookies coming from America the most important name is that of a Frenchman, Evan Fournier, who also landed at Olympiacos. Among these – including Stanley Johnson and Jordan Nwora of Efes, Chimezi Metu of Barcelona – also includes Armoni Brooks. 11 players were taken from Eurocup teams; six come from the BCL and among these are David McCormack and Ousmane Diop. Among those who did not play any international competition last year and are now in the EuroLeague, in addition to Neno Dimitrijevic, there are Real Madrid guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes who was in Russia and Partizan point guard Carlos Jones who was in China.
GOODBYE! – Three legendary players retired in the summer: Sergio Rodriguez and Rudy Fernández of Real Madrid; Kyle Hines of Olimpia. A fourth would be AS Monaco’s Kemba Walker who, however, has not played significantly in Europe. Hines and Rodriguez are two of three players, the third being Sergio Llull, who have played more than 400 EuroLeague games. All three are also among the top 18 scorers in history.
MILESTONES – Shavon Shields is 82 points away from 2,000 in his career and two games away from 100 with the Olimpia jersey on, a threshold surpassed by Nik Melli, Kaleb Tarczewski, Vlado Micov and Kyle Hines before him (Sergio Rodriguez had stopped at 99). Nikola Mirotic is 62 points behind Georgios Printezis in ninth place among the all-time scorers. Among the players preceding him there are five active ones: Mike James, Nando De Colo, Sergio Llull, Jan Vesely and Kostas Sloukas. Mirotic is also one of 10 players with more than 4,000 rating points. He is currently seventh overall. Josh Nebo is 31 points away from reaching 1,000 points scored in his career.
