page_title: Sport in Greece
section_title: Basketball
hierarchical_section_title: Sport in Greece / Basketball
caption_attribution_description: English: Fedon Matheou in Athens OAKA stadium.
context_page_description: Greece has risen to prominence in a number of sporting areas in recent decades. Football in particular has seen a rapid transformation, with the Greek national football team winning the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship. Many Greek athletes have also achieved significant success and have won world and olympic titles in numerous sports during the years, such as basketball, wrestling, water polo, athletics, weightlifting, with many of them becoming international stars inside their sports. The successful organisation of the Athens 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games led also to the further development of many sports and has led to the creation of many world class sport venues all over Greece and especially in Athens. Greek athletes have won a total 146 medals for Greece in 15 different Olympic sports at the Summer Olympic Games, including the Intercalated Games, an achievement which makes Greece one of the top nations globally, in the world's rankings of medals per capital.
context_section_description: Greece has a long tradition and history of success in basketball. Greece was one of the eight founding members of FIBA in 1932 and the national governing body is the Hellenic Basketball Federation, member of FIBA Europe. The Greek national basketball team is considered among the world's top basketball powers; ranked 9th in the world. They were the silver medalists of the 2006 FIBA World Championship after beating 101–95 the United States of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony in the tournament's semifinal. They have been crowned European Champions twice, in 1987 and 2005, and they have also won three more medals at European level, one silver in 1989 and two bronze medals in 1949 and 2009 Eurobasket. At the Olympic Games they have been placed 5th in three occasions. The 1987 gold medal was the first win for a Greek national team in a major tournament in any team sport, thus basketball became extremely popular in Greece after that achievement. The youth national teams of Greece have also enjoyed great success, having been crowned World and European Champions and having won a hatful of medals in all the major World and European tournaments.
  The Greek Basket League is the top professional basketball league in Greece and one of the strongest in Europe, while several Greek clubs have won major European titles. In fact, Greek basketball teams are the most successful in European basketball the last 25 years, having won as many as 9 Euroleagues since the establishment of the modern era Euroleague Final Four format in 1988, while no other nation has won more than 5 Euroleague championships in this period. AEK Athens was the first-ever Greek team, not only to reach a European Cup Final, but also to win a European title. On April 4, 1968, AEK Athens defeated Slavia Prague by a score of 89-82, in Athens before 80,000 spectators. Panathinaikos, six times European Champions and Olympiacos, three times European Champions and four times Euroleague Runners-up, are two of the most successful European clubs and among the top basketball powers in Europe.
  Besides the 9 Euroleagues, Greek basketball teams (Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki, AEK Athens, PAOK, Maroussi) have won 3 Triple Crowns, 5 Saporta Cups, 2 Korać Cups and 1 FIBA Europe Champions Cup, while all of them - except for Maroussi - have made it to the Euroleague Final Four. In women's basketball, Athinaikos have won the EuroCup. A number of Greek and Greek-born foreign players have gained notability for their achievements such as Nikos Galis, widely regarded as one of the all-time greatest players in international basketball history, Panagiotis Giannakis, Panagiotis Fasoulas, Fanis Christodoulou, Theodoros Papaloukas, Vassilis Spanoulis and Dimitris Diamantidis. The Greek players that have played in the NBA are Efthimios Rentzias, Vassilis Spanoulis, Antonis Fotsis, Andreas Glyniadakis, Jake Tsakalidis, Kostas Papanikolaou, Nigerian brothers, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Thanasis Antetokounmpo, and Greek Americans Lou Tsioropoulos, Kurt Rambis, Nick Calathes and Kostas Koufos. Anastasia Kostaki and Evanthia Maltsi are female Greek professional basketball players that have played in the WNBA.
caption: Faidon Matthaiou, considered to be the Patriarch of the basketball in Greece
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