A warm and wonderful welcome to the earliest opening day ever for a Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season!
No one wanted to wait until October to get the party started, so it had to happen on the last day of September.
For basketball lovers, anticipation is always sweet this time of year. Their new teams are going under the spotlight, the ball is being bounced and shot in earnest again, and the unpredictability that reigns in the EuroLeague means that every team is a potential champion right now.
But today is different for one major reason.
In greater or lesser proportion – but in full voice no matter their numbers – the greatest fans in the world are back.
More precisely, they are back where they belong, at the center of our sport, projecting their energy onto the playing court and boosting their teams to greater heights.
The most passionate basketball supporters anywhere are the special sauce of the European game, and starting today, they will be mixed back into a magic recipe that makes the EuroLeague so irresistible.
Opening night is the perfect moment to remember the ultimate truth about the EuroLeague: every game counts.
But it was just three seasons ago that one team reached the playoffs and another missed them by just 3 points between them that would not have changed the outcome of either of their games that season.
So beyond every game, every play counts, too.
Keep that in mind while enjoying tonight's first Game of the Week between AX Armani Exchange Milan and visiting CSKA Moscow, two giants of world basketball who last met in last spring's third-place game.