The 2001–02 Euroleague was the second season of the professional basketball competition for elite clubs throughout Europe, organised by Euroleague Basketball Company, and it was the 45th season of the premier competition for European men's clubs overall. The season started on October 10, 2001, and ended on May 5, 2002.
The Final Four was hosted in the PalaMalaguti in Bologna, Italy. A number of 32 teams competed for the championship, which was won by Panathinaikos.[1] Mirsad Türkcan was named Regular season MVP, while Dejan Bodiroga was awarded EuroLeague Top 16 MVP and EuroLeague Final Four MVP.
The 2001–02 season was the first run by ULEB and its company, the Euroleague Basketball, after FIBA Europe agreed that it would no longer organise Europe's top competition. Given that the previous season there were two main competitions, the 2000–01 FIBA Suproleague and the 2000–01 Euroleague, thus two European champions (Maccabi Tel Aviv and Kinder Bologna), it was decided that an opening tournament would be played to determine the unofficial champion. The Euroleague opening tournament was hosted in Ljubljana by Union Olimpija and was won by Cibona VIP, the only guest of the tournament, beating Maccabi Tel Aviv 78–67 in the final.[2]
The table below shows the default access list.
The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round (TH: EuroLeague title holders)
The first phase was a regular season, in which the competing teams were drawn into four groups, each containing eight teams. Each team played every other team in its group at home and away, resulting in 14 games for each team in the first stage. The top 4 teams in each group advanced to the next round, The Top 16. The complete list of tiebreakers is provided in the lead-in to the Regular Season results.
If one or more clubs were level on won-lost record, tiebreakers were applied in the following order:
The remaining 16 teams were placed into four groups of four teams each. Each team played every other team in its group twice, once at home and once away. The top teams of each of the four groups advanced to the Final Four.