Proposed team list for 2013-14 Turkish Airlines Euroleague

The proposed list of participating teams for the 2013-14 Turkish Airlines Euroleague has been distributed this week for review by the members of the Euroleague Commercial Assets Executive Board, which will make its final recommendations in advance of the ECA Shareholders Meeting to be held on July, 3 in Barcelona.

The list is comprised of a total of 31 teams, 23 of whom would take part directly in the 2013-14 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Regular Season. That group includes six teams making their Turkish Airlines Euroleague debuts: JSF Nanterre as French League champion, Stelmet Zielona Gora as Polish League champion, Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade as Adriatic League runner-up, Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar as Russian League runner-up (Russian teams are ranked according to the PBL + UBL competitions ranking), Budivelnik Kiev of Ukraine as a one year wild card replacing Asseco Prokom Gdynia of Poland, and FC Bayern Munich of Germany as a one year wild card that became vacant after the Eurocup champion Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar also qualified for the competition as Russian League runner-up. French League runner-up Strasbourg IG, which previously played in the Euroleague in 2005-06, is proposed to replace Italian League runner-up Acea Virtus Roma with a one year wild card after they renounced its right to participate in the competition as announced on the 21st of June.

Eight more teams are proposed to participate in the qualifying rounds for the right to become the regular season’s 24th participant. CEZ Basketball Nymburk, Telenet Ostend and VEF Riga were national champions of the Czech Republic, Belgium and Latvia respectively; while Banvit Bandirma of Turkey, Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius of Lithuania and EWE Baskets Oldenburg of Germany were national runners-up. BC Khimki Moscow Region of Russia and Cimberio Varese of Italy round out the eight teams as wild cards.

Euroleague Basketball evaluates a number of different criteria before proposing wild cards. These include market growth strategy, the competitive standard of the team and its ability to meet the Turkish Airlines Euroleague minimum requirements, amongst others.

The 2013-14 competition system will be the same as the recently completed season. The eight qualifying-round teams will play a single-elimination tournament, with the winner joining the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Regular Season, consisting of four groups of six teams each playing 10 games. The best four teams from each of those regular season groups will advance to the Top 16, which will have two groups of eight teams each playing 14 games, whilst the other eight teams following the end of the regular season will join the Eurocup competition. The best eight teams from the Top 16 will face off in the best-of-five playoffs for the chance to reach the 2014 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four. The complete list of teams is as follows:

Those teams participating in the 2013-14 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Qualifying Rounds are as follows:

Source: Euroleague.net