Slovenia Wins EuroBasket: Istanbul, 2017
2017 · event
On 17 September 2017, in the Sinan Erdem hall in Istanbul, Slovenia beat Serbia by ninety three points to eighty five and won the European basketball championship for the first time. The team finished the tournament with nine wins from nine games, the only side to go through it unbeaten. Goran Dragic scored thirty five points in the final and was named the most valuable player of the championship. His teammate Luka Doncic, eighteen years old and playing his first senior tournament, was already being watched by the rest of the world.
Slovenia has around two million people and had never won a title in a major team sport. It had qualified for European championships regularly since independence in 1991 and had reached a fourth place, but the country arrived in Turkey without being counted among the favourites. The squad was coached by Igor Kokoskov and built on quick, unselfish play, and it beat Latvia, Spain and then Serbia in three days.
The final was watched at home by a share of the population that broadcasters rarely see. When the team returned, tens of thousands of people filled Congress Square in Ljubljana, and the celebration ran through the night in towns across the country. For many Slovenians it is remembered alongside the political milestones of the young state.
The victory changed what the country expected of itself in sport, and it arrived at the start of a decade in which Slovenian athletes reached the top of cycling, basketball and other disciplines. The team of 2017 is the reference point, a small nation that took the continental title by playing better than everyone else for two weeks.