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EuroLeague Coaches: Facts and Stories

The coaches who conquered Europe: Obradović, Messina, Ataman, Gomelsky and more, with their titles and stories.

1948 Legendary Olimpia Milano coach Cesare Rubini won Olympic gold in London in 1948, in water polo. He was later inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

3 Aleksandar Nikolić, known as 'the Professor', won three European Champions Cups with Ignis Varese, in 1970, 1972 and 1973. Later he coached Yugoslavia to the 1978 world title.

1974 In 1974 Pedro Ferrándiz won his fourth European Champions Cup with Real Madrid, after 1965, 1967 and 1968. He also won 12 Spanish league titles.

6 Lolo Sainz won the European Champions Cup six times with Real Madrid: four as a player in the 1960s and two as head coach, in 1978 and 1980.

1984 Coach Valerio Bianchini won the Champions Cup with two clubs: Cantù in 1982 and Banco di Roma in 1984, who beat Barcelona 79-73 in the final.

2 Mirko Novosel coached Cibona to back-to-back European titles in 1985 and 1986. Earlier he had led Yugoslavia to EuroBasket gold in 1973 and 1975.

24 Dan Peterson won the 1987 European Cup with Tracer Milano and then retired from coaching. In January 2011, 24 years later and aged 74, he came back to coach Olimpia again.

3 Božidar Maljković won the European title with three different clubs: Jugoplastika Split (1989, 1990), Limoges (1993) and Panathinaikos (1996).

1993 Svetislav Pešić coached Germany to EuroBasket gold in 1993, and ten years later won the EuroLeague with Barcelona, the club's first title.

15 Dušan Ivković won the EuroLeague with Olympiacos twice, 15 years apart: in 1997 and 2012.

4 Ettore Messina won four EuroLeague titles with two clubs: Virtus Bologna in 1998 and 2001, and CSKA Moscow in 2006 and 2008.

3 Pini Gershon led Maccabi Tel Aviv to three European titles: 2001, 2004 and 2005.

37 Xavi Pascual was only 37 when he coached Barcelona to the 2010 EuroLeague title.

5 Under Željko Obradović, Fenerbahçe reached five Final Fours in a row, from 2015 to 2019.

13 Dimitris Itoudis spent 13 years as Željko Obradović's assistant, then won the EuroLeague with CSKA Moscow in 2016 and 2019.

2021 In 2021 Ergin Ataman became the first Turkish coach to win the EuroLeague, with Anadolu Efes. He won three titles in four years, the third with Panathinaikos in 2024.

11 Pablo Laso coached Real Madrid for 11 seasons and won two EuroLeagues. In 2022, after he suffered a heart attack, the club let him go, and he soon took over Bayern Munich.

2023 Chus Mateo, Pablo Laso's former assistant, won the EuroLeague with Real Madrid in 2023, his first full season as head coach.

23 In 2025 Sergio Scariolo returned as Real Madrid head coach, 23 years after his first spell at the club ended.

19 By 2026 coaches from Serbia had won Europe's top club title 19 times, nine of them through Željko Obradović.

9 Željko Obradović has won nine EuroLeague titles as a head coach, with five different clubs.

4 Alexander Gomelsky, known as the father of Soviet basketball, won four European Champions Cups as a coach. The EuroLeague's Coach of the Year award bears his name.

13 Before becoming NBA Coach of the Year, Mike D'Antoni played 13 seasons for Olimpia Milano and won two European Champions Cups. The club retired his number 8.

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