By Lefteris Moutis / moutis@eurohoops.net
Which players are most recognizable symbols of their Euroleague teams? In an era of continuous transfers, Eurohoops.net has compiled a list of players who boast the most appearances in Euroleague games with only one team.
Transfers from one team to another are now very common and it’s very rare to find players and teams who stay together very long. That’s true no just throughout their entire careers, but even throughout their terms in the Euroleague.
And yet, there are still several players who have spent a dozen years with only one team and who have worn the colors of just one Euroleague team at least 100 times.
In this list, many more players whose names are associated with a single team could have been included, but lost this “privilege” because they played in the competition for at least one season with another team. For example, Kostas Tsartsaris played 11 seasons and 214 Euroleague games with Panathinaikos Athens, but also two seasons and 25 games for Peristeri. Or his former teammate, Mike Batiste; he was identified with Panathinaikos for 10 years and 204 games, but made his Euroleague debut with Charleroi for one year and 10 games and later played for Fenerbahce Istanbul in 23 games in the 2012-13 season.
Paulius Jankunas broke the run he had with Zalgiris Kaunas from 2003-04 until today for a total of 12 seasons and 204 games, because of his participation with Khimki Moscow Region in 16 games in the Euroleague in the 2009-10 season. Likewise, J.R. Holden, who had 189 games in a total of nine seasons with CSKA Moscow, made his debut in the Euroleague with AEK for one year and 20 games.
Luis Scola
Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz
144 appearances
Scola last played in the Euroleague in 2007 and yet he’s still among the top ten players with the most appearances with only one team. That’s because in the first seven seasons of the competition, the Argentinian big man was one a symbolic player for the Euroleague and for Tau Ceramica (now Laboral Kutxa). Scola began his career with the club at the age of 17 in 1997, but starting in 2000 he became one of the leading players of the team, finishing his career in the Euroleague with an average of 14.3 points and 5.6 rebounds! He participated in three Final Fours plus the 2000-01 finals. Twice he was a member of the All-Euroleague First Team and once of the second team.
Andrey Vorontsevich
CSKA Moscow
153 appearances
He’s by far the youngest player on this list. Vorontsevich signed with CSKA in the summer of 2006 and he’s been a permanent member of the team ever since. In 2008, he won the Euroleague title, and since then has gradually acquired a bigger and bigger role in the Russian team. In the last few years, he’s the team’s main power forward. He has participated in a total of eight Final Fours, and at just 28 years old, he can definitely add to his status as a player-symbol for CSKA for several years to come.
Victor Sada
FC Barcelona Lassa
166 appearances
Sada is yet another product of Barcelona’s academies and was for many years a fixture on the team. The native guard played for Barcelona for a total of nine seasons, but he had an important role only after he returned from Girona in 2008. Sada was for many years the point guard who regularly undertook mostly defensive and creative assignments. When Barcelona won its first European trophy in 2003, he was still on the club’s B-team, but by 2010 he was a core member of the team and celebrated reaching the top. In the summer of 2014 he left from Barcelona but he still has the second-most Euroleague appearance in the famous Barcelona colors.
Berni Rodriguez
Unicaja Malaga
169 appearances
Rodriguez is Unicaja! He grew up in Malaga and began his professional career in the city’s biggest team in the 1999-2000 season. He proceeded to play a total of 169 Euroleague games with Unicaja. From 2001-02 onwards, Rodriguez was a key member of Unicaja for 11 straight years, eventually departing in the 2011-12 season. He was a backcourt player who could perform a lot of tasks on the court and was always a bulwark for Unicaja’s coaches. He’s 35 years old now and still plays on non-Euroleague teams in Spain.