History
The national basketball league was first organized for play in Italy in 1920. The first title was won by SEF Costanza Milano, and the team holding the record for title championships is Olimpia Milano, who have won 25 championships. Twenty different teams have won the championship since its inception. In recent years, the league has been dominated by a handful of teams:
- Virtus Bologna, with five scudetti between 1993 and 2001.
- Benetton Treviso, with five scudetti (league titles) since 1992.
- Virtus' crosstown rivals Fortitudo (who dropped from the professional ranks in 2009); although only with two scudetti, they had an 11-year run from 1996 to 2006 in which they appeared in the championship series 10 times.
- Montepaschi Siena, with seven scudetti since 2004.
Until the 2000s, the Italian Championship was the most important national domestic league in Europe, but now the Spanish ACB League is considered to be stronger than Serie A (ULEB League Rankings).
Through the 2007–08 season, 18 teams competed; however, in September 2008, two clubs, Basket Napoli (not related to the current NSB Napoli, which moved from Rieti to Naples after the 2008–09 season) and Orlandina, were forcibly relegated from the professional ranks for financial irregularities and were not replaced for the 2008–09 season. Today, 16 teams compete in the highest level of play.
Read more about this topic: Lega Basket Serie A
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