2018 Final Four Official Programme

The Coach: Zeljko Obradovic, Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul For the coach who has won everything, there are always new motivations, and going into the 2018 Final Four, the great Zeljko Obradovic has a few. If he can take defending champion Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul to the mountaintop again, Obradovic will win his 10th EuroLeague title – more than any player, coach or club in the 60-year history of European club competitions. And he will come full circle. Having won his first EuroLeague title with a Belgrade team in Istanbul, Obradovic is trying now for his 10th with an Istanbul club in Belgrade. Obradovic is also aiming to record what would be a fresh achievement for him: back-to-back EuroLeague titles with the same team. He has become the continental champion in consecutive campaigns before, with Joventut Badalona in 1994 and with Real Madrid a year later. But taking the same team to glory in successive seasons would be a first in his career. Obradovic has his sights set on reaching that goal with Fenerbahce following last season’s impressive EuroLeague triumph on home soil in Istanbul. Though he is coaching the defending champion, not all his players are reigning champs because the Fenerbahce roster underwent a series of significant departures last summer. The fact that Obradovic has remodeled the team so effectively is no surprise, considering the remarkably consistent success he has enjoyed in an array of environments over the course of his glorious career. Now in his 23rd EuroLeague season, Obradovic has only once overseen a team with a losing record, and his sides have won at least 70% of their games in 13 of those campaigns. This particular Final Four will be extra special for Obradovic since it is staged in his native Serbia, allowing him to return to the city where his playing career ended and his coaching career began with Partizan. That fact is sure to earn Fenerbahce some adopted fans for the duration of the weekend, and Obradovic’s many admirers will be confident that the remarkable coach will write yet another chapter in his already-loaded personal history book. The Legend: Damir Mrsic, Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul If Turkish basketball’s climb to its current heights goes back to the sport’s rise in popularity there at the turn of the century, then the current status of Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul as the country’s first continental champion can be traced to when DamirMrsic wore the famous yellow-and-blue striped uniform and the club took up the challenge of reaching the European elite. Mrsic was already the Turkish League’s top scorer in 2000when he joined Fenerbahce for one season and kept hitting themany long- range shots that made him a favorite of the club’s fans. Before long, Fenerbahce had to have himback, and when the club joined the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague in 2006, Mrsic – a native of Bosnia-Herzegovina who by then had become a Turkish citizen, as well – was the team captain, leading the charge. Mrsic would stay, proudly wearing the club’s famous yellow and navy-blue stripes, until the end of his career. Playing his last four seasons for Fenerbahce in the EuroLeague, Mrsic proved to be one of themost dangerous shooters of the century when he stepped on the floor. Only two other players in competition history have surpassed his 3.9 three-pointers made per 40minutes of playing time. And even though he appeared in just 58 games total, just 11 other EuroLeague players havemademore three-pointers than Mrsic with a higher accuracy rate than his 42.5%. Also during that time, Fenerbahcemade its first EuroLeague Playoffs appearance, setting a precedent for many future successes. That happened in in 2007-08 season, which started withMrsic making 5 three-pointers on his 37th birthday. He would go on tomake 50more threes before retiring in 2010 at age 39. By then, he and Fenerbahce had been Turkish League champions together three times in four years – the same as the club’s current dynasty. Mrsic retired as a domestic champion having served Fenerbahce for seven seasons total and the last four as its captain. Just as he had gained Turkish citizenship, DamirMrsic had become an adopted son of Fenerbahce forever. OFFICIAL PROGRAMME 20