It’s Reigning Men

By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net

Every EuroLeague season gets underway with only one goal in everyone’s mind: winning the trophy. Some make it, some don’t. This season is no different: on May 20 in Belgrade, only a select few will get to hold the trophy in their hands. The moment will be special, but for some perhaps not unprecedented, since this season the EuroLeague features 42 current or former champions on the rosters of the 16 competing teams. Some players have even won it three times!

Three of a kind

Vassilis Spanoulis stands out in this short list, having combined the collective distinction of winning the title and being named MVP of three Final Fours. The fact that he did this with two different teams – and, in fact, the two eternal rivals of Greek basketball – makes his accomplishment even more special. His first came in 2009 in Berlin with Panathinaikos (15.5 points, 1.5 rebounds, 1 assist). Then in 2012 in Istanbul (18 points, 1.5 rebounds, 4 assists) and 2013 in London (15 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4 assists), where aside from impressive stats, he also scored almost all of Olympiacos Piraeus’s big baskets. They don’t call him “Kill Bill” for nothing.

Alongside Spanoulis for those historic back-to-back wins was Kyle Hines, who followed his own path to Moscow immediately and in 2016 in Berlin (15 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists in the final against Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul) won his third ring. In fact, that season with CSKA Moscow may have been his best in many aspects; Hines was named 2015-16 EuroLeague Best Defender.

A year later was the turn of their former teammates, Kostas Sloukas and Pero Antic, to collect their third crowns. As luck would have it, the duo celebrated their third and Fenerbahce Istanbul’s first-ever EuroLeague title against the team with which they had captured the first two. Sloukas contributed 6 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists on average in the Final Four, while Antic lent a hand only in the final (4 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist) again Olympiacos.

One plus one

The list of players with two titles features a handful of EuroLeague greats. Juan Carlos Navarro stands out as a Euroleague Basketball Legend and the competition’s scoring king. Apart from everything else, when Navarro captured his second trophy in 2010 in Paris (the first was in 2003 in Barcelona), he was also the EuroLeague Final Four MVP (15.5 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists).

Another big EuroLeague figure on the list is Victor Khryapa, a champion in 2008 in Madrid and in 2016 in Berlin. CSKA’s captain has two more players who have won the EuroLeague twice at his side, Andrey Vorontsevich and Nikita Kurbanov. Kurbanov won in 2006 in Prague as well as 2016, but his brief loan to UNICS Kazan deprived him of the chance to be there when CSKA won in 2008. Vorontsevich won in 2008 and 2016.

They’re all together on the same list along with Georgios Printezis, Kostas Papanikolaou, Vangelis Mantzaris and Giorgi Shermadini. The first three were members of Olympiacos in the back-to-back wins of 2012 and 2013, while the Georgian center was with the Reds for the second title in London. Shermadini won his maiden ring with Panathinaikos in 2009 in Berlin, even though he only had one appearance in the competition.

One is better than none

The list of one-time winners is made up of the remaining 30 players out of the 42 current or former champs, some with a greater contribution on the way to the top and others with a smaller one.

Among them, there are three EuroLeague MVPs, but only one of them for the season they won the title and who was also the EuroLeague Final Four MVP. That is Nando De Colo, who in 2016 took home the MVP of the season trophy and that of the Final Four in Berlin (26 points, 2.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 2 steals). His current teammate, Sergio Rodriguez, was the EuroLeague MVP in 2014, which was one season before he lifted the trophy with Madrid. Sergio Llull first got to hold the trophy as a player for Madrid in 2015 in Madrid and won the EuroLeague MVP in 2017.

Among the other notable champs are: Felipe Reyes, also from Madrid, and Nikos Zisis from Brose Bamberg, both of whom are in the all-time top three in terms of appearances in the competition; the top scorer of this season’s first 24 rounds, Alexey Shved, then of CSKA and now of Khimki Moscow Region; Panathinaikos’s Nick Calathes who won in his first stint with the Greens; reigning champion Jan Vesely of Fenerbahce; and veteran Ricky Hickman of Brose for the unforgettable 2014 Final Four that Maccabi won in Milan.

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