By Stelios Toromanidis/ info@eurohoops.net
We have all experienced those moments when the clock is ticking down, everyone’s adrenaline spikes, eyes pop from their sockets, no one can breathe and everything hinges on a single shot. These are the moments that make basketball the most exciting game on the planet!
Since the turn of the century, the Euroleague has witnessed hundreds of great shots. Some have decided a game, others secured tickets to a Final Four and there have even been championship games with such moments. To celebrate these unforgettable moments, Eurohoops.net chose its top ten and presents them here for fans to take a trip down memory lane to re-witness some of the competition’s greatest moments.
The list includes the best game-winning shots, but not those that took a game into overtime.
Thus, for instance, Derrick Sharp’s unbelievable buzzer beater in the Top 16 finale in 2004 – which took the Maccabi Tel Aviv–Zalgiris Kaunas game into overtime, where the home team won and qualified for the Final Four in Tel Aviv – is not among our choices. The same goes for Joshua Childress’s follow in the semifinal between Partizan Belgrade and Olympiacos Piraeus in the 2010 Final Four in Paris, which gave the Reds a second chance in the extra five minutes and, in the end, the ticket to the final.
Sit back and enjoy the countdown of the greatest game-winners in competition history.
Game: Skipper Bologna 76-75 Efes Pilsen
Phase: Top 16 Round 5, 2004
Arena: Paladozza, Bologna
Perpetrator: Gianluca Basile
Time remaining: 0:02
Up until the 2003-04 season there were no playoffs and the tickets to the Final Four were issued to the teams that won each of the four Top 16 groups. So, the March 31, 2004, game between Skipper and Efes had the flavor of a final. A pair of free throws by Antonio Granger gave Efes a 75-73 lead with 10 seconds remaining. In the decisive attack, the ball went to the hot hands of Basile, who, with his sixth three-pointer in the game, sent his team’s fans to seventh heaven.