The ULEB All-Star Game was the all-star basketball exhibition game, which took part annually from 1992 until 1994 representing players from the Spanish and the Italian Leagues and also the French in its last edition. The All-Star Games only featured foreign players from each league and were considered as part of the now defunct Spanish and Italian Lega Basket All Star Games in its all three editions, but not of the French League which joined them only in the 1994 Games.[1][2]
The Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB) was founded by the professional basketball organising bodies of Italy, France and Spain on June 25, 1991 in Rome, Italy in a bid to protect their clubs' financial interests within FIBA as their relationship with the latter has gradually started deteriorating. A year after, in November 1992, the Italian, and the Spanish League decided to unify their annual All-Star Games in a joint event that would feature the best foreign players currently competing in the top basketball leagues of Europe at the time. Madrid was chosen as the host city of the event to celebrate the anniversary of ULEB, under its president Gianluigi Porelli.[3][4]
Concept
The events were design on the NBA All-Star Game pattern including an exhibition game, a slam-dunk and a three-point shoot contest. The duration of the games were 48 minutes, split in four quarters of twelve minutes each. There were no domestic players representing their leagues, but only the best foreign players were chosen. The majority of them were Americans, but there were also some talented Eastern Europeans such as Arvydas Sabonis, Predrag Danilovic, Zoran Savic, Aleksandar Đorđević, Alexander Volkov, Dejan Bodiroga and the only South American Oscar Schmidt. The first two editions were officially named ACB/Lega and Lega/ACB All-Star Games respectively, depending on the country of origins of the venue, though they were organised by the Spanish and Italian federations who were the founders of ULEB. The last edition was officially renamed ULEB All-Star Game as the other ULEB's founding member, the French Federation participated. The last All-Star Game on November 14, 1994 included three games of 24 minutes between the three Federations, with the Italian League being crowned the winner of the competition after beating the French and the Spanish All-Stars.
ULEB members by 2002 were federations from: Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, Germany and Poland (11). Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Austria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia joined in 2002.
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