Euroleague 2008–09

Euroleague

The Final Four was held in the O2 World in Berlin
Season	2008–09
Champions	Panathinaikos 5th title
Runners-up	CSKA Moscow
Third place	FC Barcelona
Fourth place	Olympiacos
Teams	24
Games played	188 (total)
Dates	22 October 2008 – 3 May 2009
Awards
MVP	Juan Carlos Navarro
Final Four MVP	Vassilis Spanoulis
Rising Star	Novica Veličković
Best Defender	Dimitris Diamantidis
Coach of the Year	Duško Vujošević
Statistical leaders
Index Rating	D'or Fischer 21.5
Points	Igor Rakočević 18.0
Rebounds	Mirsad Türkcan 8.6
Assists	Theodoros Papaloukas 5.2
← 2007–08 2009–10 →

The 2008–09 Euroleague was the 9th season of the professional basketball competition for elite clubs throughout Europe, organised by Euroleague Basketball Company, and it was the 52nd season of the premier competition for European men's clubs overall. The season, which featured 24 teams from 13 different countries, culminated in the 2008–09 Euroleague Final Four at the new O₂ World arena in Berlin, Germany. It was won by Panathinaikos, who defeated in the final, the defending champions, CSKA Moscow.

While the general structure of the competition was identical to that used in recent seasons, changes were made to the format for two of its phases, the Regular Season and Quarterfinals.

Regular Season

The first phase was a regular season, in which the competing teams were drawn into four groups, each containing six teams. Each team played every other team in its group at home and away, resulting in 10 games for each team in the first stage. The top 4 teams in each group advanced to the next round. This was the first year for this particular format; previously, the competing teams were split into three groups of eight teams each, with the top five teams in each group plus the best sixth-place team advancing.

If two or more clubs finished level on won-lost record, tiebreakers were applied in the following order:

Games were played from October 22, 2008 to January 15, 2009.

Top 16

The surviving teams were then divided into four groups of four teams each, and again a round-robin system was adopted resulting in 6 games each, with the top 2 teams advancing to the quarterfinals. Tiebreakers are identical to those used in the Regular Season. Games began on January 28 and ended March 12.

Quarterfinals

In the quarterfinals, the top placed teams from each Top 16 group played second placed teams from a different group in a best-of-five playoff series, with the winners of those series advancing to the Final Four. This was the first season in which the quarterfinals were best-of-five; previously, they had been best-of-three. The quarterfinal matches were played from March 24 until April 9.