By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
The 2025/26 EuroLeague postseason is fast approaching, and the teams who have already qualified for the playoffs are all jostling for position in the hopes of securing optimum seeding. Olympiacos, Valencia, Real Madrid, Hapoel Tel Aviv — they’ve done the work across thirty-four regular-season games, earned their spot in the top four, and are on the brink of securing home court advantage for the playoffs.
Fenerbahçe and Žalgiris are right outside, scratching and clawing in the hopes of usurping one of the top four to claim the home berth for themselves. Both have been here before. Both know exactly what to do next. And if the top four have any sense, they’ll spend the coming days not studying their next opponents’ offensive systems, but reading about what happened to the clubs that felt exactly as confident as they do right now — and were destroyed anyway.
The EuroLeague Favourites
Online betting sites already know who they think will leave Athens as champions next month, and it’s one of the two clubs from the Greek capital hosting the Final Four. Current top-seed Olympiacos has been made the 2/1 frontrunner by Ozoon Sportsbook, with their cross-city rival Panathinaikos, currently set for a play-in battle, listed as the surprise 11/4 second-favourites. But the best-of-five format is European basketball’s great equaliser.
In theory, it protects excellence — home court in Games 1, 2, and 5, the crowd behind you for the decisive moments, six months of momentum funnelled into a single series. In reality, three bad nights can undo an entire season in a week. The teams that peak in April beat the teams that dominated in February. Every single time. Don’t take our word for it. Ask Panathinaikos. They’ve fallen victim twice to stunners in the last decade, and this year, they’re looking for a role reversal.
2016/17 Panathinaikos
The Athens OAKA was supposed to be a fortress. Panathinaikos had finished fourth in the regular season, assembled a veteran-laden squad, and carried the weight of a fanbase that remembers EuroLeague titles — that expects them. Fenerbahçe arrived as the fifth seed, and somewhere in the Greek capital, somebody presumably felt comfortable about that. Home court. Familiar floor. A fanbase that has seen this club win European titles and demands nothing less than a Final Four appearance as a baseline.
They shouldn’t have felt comfortable. Ekpe Udoh had ranked first in efficiency rating across the entire regular season. Bobby Dixon and Nikola Kalinic applied relentless pressure from every angle. Panathinaikos had no answers. Not in Game 1 (71–58), not in Game 2 (80–75), not in Game 3 (61–79). Three games. Three losses. Swept — by a team without home court, in a competition that had never seen that happen before. The OAKA crowd sat in silence that third night, watching something unprecedented in EuroLeague playoff history. First-ever sweep without home-court advantage. Panathinaikos owned that record now, and they hadn’t wanted it.
2017/18 Panathinaikos
Twelve months later. Same club. Second seed this time. 19 and 11 again. Home court again. And in Game 1, they’d beaten Real Madrid by 28 points — 95–67, a scoreline so emphatic it seemed to announce the series was already over. The OAKA believed it. The players believed it. How could they not?
Los Blancos didn’t blink. They didn’t panic, didn’t adjust badly, didn’t waver in the slightest. They won Games 2, 3, and 4 — consecutive victories at 89–82, 89–82, before sealing it — with the cold composure of a side that understood exactly how good a teenage sensation by the name of Luka Doncic truly was.
How do you explain that to a dressing room? How does a coach account for the fact that the hardest game to win is the one after you’ve just proved you’re better? Panathinaikos had convinced themselves the hard part was over after Game 1. Madrid knew the hard part hadn’t started yet.
2017/18 Olympiacos
Here’s the dark comedy hiding inside the 2017/18 playoffs: while Panathinaikos were being dismantled by Madrid in Athens, Olympiacos — fourth seed, 19–11, perennial top-four presences — were simultaneously being taken apart by Žalgiris in Piraeus. Both Greek giants. Same bracket. Same fate. The Acropolis never felt further from the Final Four.
What made the Žalgiris story more than a simple upset was that it was never accidental. Šarūnas Jasikevičius had been building something in Kaunas with genuine intent — Paulius Jankūnas and Kevin Pangos had both earned All-EuroLeague Second Team honours that season. This was a team that peaked at precisely the right moment against a side that never found its rhythm. Žalgiris won Game 1 on the road in Piraeus, 87–78, and Olympiacos spent the rest of the series chasing a momentum they never recaptured. Kaunas sealed it 101–91. The Reds were outworked, outwitted, and ultimately outclassed.
2021/22 Milan
This was genuinely the finest Milan team in a generation. Sergio Rodriguez orchestrating, Shavon Shields delivering on both ends, Nicolò Melli third in rebounds per game — a defensively disciplined system that had finished third in the regular season and arrived at the playoffs believing that this was their year. Sixth-seeded Anadolu Efes walked into the Mediolanum Forum and won Game 1 64-48 and immediately shattered any illusions that the Italian outfit may have had.
Milan steadied in Game 2, winning 73–66. But Efes won Games 3 and 4, 77–65 and 75–70. In the clincher, Adrien Moerman posted a career-high 23 points and dismantled Milan’s interior defence so comprehensively that the series felt like it had been decided in some earlier dimension where Efes simply couldn’t lose. They went to the Final Four. They won the championship. Milan watched from home, knowing that at least they’d lost to the best team in Europe. For a moment, they’d thought that was them.
2023/24 AS Monaco
Mike James had done everything a basketball player can do in a regular season. He’d surpassed Vassilis Spanoulis against Red Star Belgrade to become the EuroLeague’s all-time leading scorer, earned MVP honours, led Monaco to a club-record regular season, and arrived at the playoffs as the most decorated player in the competition. Against a sixth-seeded Fenerbahçe, at home. All of that still wasn’t enough.
Monaco led Game 1 by 14. Fourteen points, home floor, MVP on court. Fenerbahçe came back. Nigel Hayes-Davis exploded for 19 points, the lead evaporated, and Fenerbahçe won 95–91 in overtime.
The series yo-yoed to 2–2, James and Donta Hall dragging Monaco level in Game 4. Then came Game 5 — the first playoff Game 5 in EuroLeague history to go to overtime. In the crunch of regulation, Marko Gudurić’s mid-range bank shot had given Fenerbahçe the lead and silenced the Principality crowd at the worst possible moment. But it was Nick Calathes who delivered the true dagger — back-to-back three-pointers in overtime that Monaco had no answer for, sealing an 80–79 Fenerbahçe win that ended James’ season in the most excruciating fashion imaginable.
2023/24 Barcelona
Olympiacos eliminated Barcelona in five games in 2023/24; they did the same thing a year prior. Only the first time around, it was expected. The second time, the Blaugrana had done the legwork in the regular season, finished in the top four, secured home court advantage, and were still beaten anyway.
Roger Grimau’s team — Tomáš Satoranský leading, Nikola Mirotic scoring, Jan Veselý and Willy Hernangómez anchoring the frontcourt — couldn’t solve a problem they’d already lived through once. Moustapha Fall and Filip Petruev combined for 22 points and 10 rebounds in a dominant Game 4. Olympiacos won Game 5 on the road and victory, once again, was theirs.