The Euroleague is an international professional basketball club competition for elite clubs throughout Europe. The 2007–2008 season featured 24 competing teams. The Euroleague Regular Season drew was held on 30 June 2007 in the Jesolo, Italy, during the inaugural Euroleague summer league. The official inauguration was held on October 22 at Hala Olivia in Gdańsk, Poland before the season's opening game between Prokom Trefl Sopot and CSKA Moscow. The 2008 Final Four was held on May 2–4, 2008 at the Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid in Madrid, Spain. Russian power CSKA Moscow became the champion for the sixth time, placing them second in all-time European championships to Real Madrid.
The first phase is a regular season, in which the competing teams are drawn into three groups, each containing eight teams. Each team plays every other team in its group at home and away, resulting in 14 games for each team in the first stage. The top 5 teams in each group and the best sixth-placed team advance to the next round. The complete list of tiebreakers is provided in the lead-in to the Regular Season results.
If one or more clubs are level on won-lost record, tiebreakers are applied in the following order:
Head-to-head record in matches between the tied clubs
Overall point difference in games between the tied clubs
Overall point difference in all group matches (first tiebreaker if tied clubs are not in the same group)
Points scored in all group matches
Sum of quotients of points scored and points allowed in each group match
Key to colors
Top five places in each group, plus highest-ranked sixth-place team, advance to Top 16
The surviving teams are divided into four groups of four teams each, and again a round robin system is adopted resulting in 6 games each, with the two top teams advancing to the quarterfinals. Tiebreakers are identical to those used in the Regular Season.
The draw to set up the Top 16 groups was held on Monday, February 4, 2008 (the week after the end of the Regular Season), in Madrid.[2]
The teams were placed into four pools, as follows:
Level 1: The three group winners, plus the top-ranked second-place team
Each Top 16 group included one team from each pool. The draw was conducted under the following restrictions:
No more than two teams from the same Regular Season group can be placed in the same Top 16 group.
No more than two teams from the same country can be placed in the same Top 16 group.
If there is a conflict between these two restrictions, (1) will receive priority.
Another draw was held to determine the order of fixtures. In cases of two teams from the same city in the Top 16 (Panathinaikos and Olympiacos, Efes Pilsen and Fenerbahçe), they were scheduled so that only one of the two teams would be at home in a given week.
Key to colors
Top two places in each group advance to quarterfinals
Each quarterfinal was a best-of-three (if third serie necessary) series between a first-place team in the Top 16 and a second-place team from a different group, with the first-place team receiving home advantage. All opening games were played on April 1, 2008, and all second games were played on April 3. The deciding third games were played on April 9 and April 10.
The Final Four is the last phase of each Euroleague season, and is held over a weekend. The semifinal games are played on Friday evening. Sunday starts with the third-place game, followed by the championship final.
^Hala Olivia was closed indefinitely due to structural problems. Prokom's remaining home Euroleague games were moved to the arena that they use for domestic matches. "Due to force majeure, Prokom changes arenas". Euroleague.net. 2007-12-18. Archived from the original on 20 December 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-19.