History
Basketball first came to Greece in the year 1910. By the 1927-28 season, the first official championship began. There have been four different official championship eras. The first era was the Panhellenic Championship (Πανελλήνιο Πρωτάθλημα), which lasted from the 1927-28 to 1962-63 seasons, when the champions of every regional district played each other to decide the Greek Champion. The second era started in the 1963-64 season, when the A National Category (Α' Εθνική Κατηγορία) was founded.
In 1969, the Hellenic Basketball Federation (E.O.K.) took over the duties of overseeing the competition, and did so until the year 1992. The third era of the championship existed between the 1986-87 and 1991-92 seasons, when the first division A1 National Category (Α1 Εθνική Κατηγορία), with a regular season and playoffs, and the second division A2 National Category (Α2 Εθνική Κατηγορία) were formed. The fourth era of the championship began in the 1992-93 season, when the Hellenic Basketball Clubs Association (HEBA) took over the competition and renamed the first division the HEBA A1 (ΕΣΑΚΕ Α1), and the second division the HEBA A2 (ΕΣΑΚΕ Α2).
The Greek League has been one of the most competitive basketball leagues in Europe through the years and it was widely regarded as the second best national league in the world after only the NBA in the 1990s decade. It currently ranks among the best national domestic leagues in the world (excluding the NBA), such as Liga ACB in Spain and Lega A in Italy. It is considered one of the 3 European "A" level leagues under the ULEB League Rankings System. The league has several great powers which belong to the most traditional European basketball clubs, especially the Euroleague giants Panathinaikos and Olympiacos. Other clubs that have had significant successes throughout the history of Greek basketball are AEK Athens and Aris. Along with PAOK, the aforementioned clubs are the most successful and widely supported in Greece.
Despite the championship having been contested 71 times, only nine different clubs have won it so far. The dominating club has always been Panathinaikos, having claimed the championship 32 times. Since its foundation, only two teams have participated in every season of the first division since 1963-64: Panathinaikos and Aris.
Read more about this topic: Greek Basket League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)