Fenerbahçe beats Olympiacos to claim Euroleague title

Fenerbahçe became the first Turkish club to claim European basketball's top club trophy with a magnificent 80-64 victory over Olympiacos on May 21.

The victory marked another milestone for Fenerbahçe's legendary coach Zeljko Obradovic, who lifted the trophy for the ninth time with five different teams. 

With the support of its fans in front of a fold out crowd, Fenerbahçe forward Jan Vesely performed a reverse alley-oop dunk in the first attack of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four championship game in front of 15,000 fans in Istanbul's Sinan Erdem Dome. Another dunk by Vesely, and three 3-pointers from his teammates in four minutes was a sign of what was yet to come.

Olympiacos kept it close in the first half and trailed by four early in the second, but Fenerbahçe broke the game open with an 11-2 third-quarter run and led by 18 early in the fourth quarter. 

Nikola Kalinic scored 17 points on 4-of-6 three-point shooting and Bogdan Bogdanovic also scored 17 for the winners. Luigi Datome scored 10 of his 11 points in the second half to help Fenerbahçe pull away.

Final Four MVP Ekpe Udoh posted 10 points, 9 rebounds and a Euroleague championship game record 5 blocked shots, helping Fenerbahçe outrebound Olympiacos 40-30 with 9 blocks for a dominant effort in the paint, while nine players were on the scoresheet for the winning side.

Khem Birch led Olympiacos with 14 points, Nikola Milutinov netted 10 and Vassilis Spanoulis finished with 9 points and 8 assists.

"Lifting the Euroleague trophy is the best thing," said Fenerbahçe's Melih Mahmutoğlu.

"Thanks to our fans, they have been amazing. We managed to stop Spanoulis and Printezis today. Everybody played perfect and we were ready."