SAPORTA CUP

Saporta Cup (C2) is a European competition for men's clubs organized by FIBA on behalf of the Standing Conference of National Basketball Federations of Europe. It is a sequel of Eurocup (former Cup Winners' Cup and European Cup), a tournament originally created for domestic Cup champions that's been going on ever since 1966. Its present denomination was first given in 1998 in honor of Raimundo Saporta, a leading personality in Spanish basketball and FIBA. Cup Winners' Cup was created after an original idea by the Polish newspaper Przeglad Sportowy of Warsaw. In the beginning, only the winners of the domestic Cup tournaments in Europe took part in C2, although in its final editions others teams were allowed to participate (especially runners-up in both Cup and League).

During the period when C2 was still called Cup Winners' Cup (from its inception in 1966 to 1990-91 season), and even later as European Cup (seasons 1991-92 to 1995-96), each participating country was entitled to register a single team—the champion in the domestic Cup, or else runners-up in either Cup or League. On the other hand, the teams that were eliminated in the first rounds of the European League (C1) had the right to enter later in C2 during the same season. Since 1996-97, with the creation of Eurocup, each country could register two teams in this competition (with some limitations set by FIBA). The competition system was also altered to allow for more participanting clubs. The same basic format was used for Saporta Cup from 1998-99 on.

NOTES

• Official FIBA scores and statistics extended and corrected with multilingual edition. Additional information sources: basketball magazines Rebote (1960) and Gigantes (1985-) and newspapers ABC (1902-), El Mundo Deportivo (1941-), Marca (1942-) and As (1967-). From 1985 on, when I started collecting my first statistics on paper, then with an Olivetti typewriter and finally using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS in an IBM computer (sweet old days...), scores and statistics are registered "on real time."