MIES (Switzerland) - Season 11 of the Basketball Champions League, powered by Ameresco SUNEL is already nearly upon us.
With that in mind, we decided to look back on the last 10 whirlwind seasons of this competition and celebrate the players who have graced our courts and helped to make our first decade so entertaining.
You saw the Team of the Decade, but let's expand it a bit more than that.
Who are the best 50 players in this competition throughout the last 10 trips around the sun?
Now, obviously, this list and ranking are subjective, and of course, there will likely be some of your favorite players that didn't make the list or that you are sure should have been higher up the list, but allow us to explain our logic a bit and also remind you that this isn't an official awards list.
Team success
Individual awards
Longevity
Impact
The following 50 players were chosen and ranked based on the above criteria. We already covered numbers 50-41 here, 40-31 here, 30-21 here, and 20-11 here.
So, without further ado, let's jump into the next 5 names.
#10 Dejan Kravic (Virtus Bologna, San Pablo Burgos, Unicaja)
“Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun… Inspector Kravic!”
Kicking off our Top 10, we have Dejan Kravic, a seven-footer with arms so long that his own team's socials admin decided to name him after Inspector Gadget. Our big Serbian has more BCL trophies than any other player.
And when you start looking at how he got them, the story becomes even more impressive. Kravic won his first BCL title with Virtus Bologna in 2019, then went back-to-back with San Pablo Burgos in 2020 and 2021. He did the three-peat with two different clubs. That is going to take some beating.
And Kravic wasn't some ceremonial big man collecting medals from the end of the bench. He played 19 games for Virtus in their title-winning campaign, averaging 7.8 points and 4.5 rebounds, before producing 10 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists in three games as Burgos drafted him in to help them win the 2020 title. He followed that with 9.9 points, 4.4 rebounds and 2 assists in 2020-21.
Kravic also sits seventh all-time for blocks with 54 from 50 games.
Kravic has the team success, the individual stats, the longevity, and he also collected a pretty big individual award. Six seasons, three BCL clubs, threes BCL titles, one FIBA Intercontinental Cup trophy, three consecutive seasons as a champion. And he also earned a place on the BCL Team of the Decade Second Team.
If the BCL is about winning, Dejan Kravic has got a pretty convincing resume.
#9 Levi Randolph (Avellino, Dinamo Sassari, Strasbourg, Oostende, Hapoel Jerusalem)
Levi Randolph is probably the most underrated scorer in BCL history. If there is one stat to illustrate that statement perfectly, it's this one: he's fourth all-time for points scored with 1030 and yet he's not even close to the top 20 all-time for appearances.
He is also the all-time leader for 20-point games, with 18 to his name. But we say he is probably the most underrated scorer in BCL history because Randolph has spent much of his career quietly going about his business, scoring, defending and making winning plays without quite getting the same level of hype as some of the bigger names on this list.
And he's been doing it for a long time.
Randolph has played for five different clubs in the BCL and his career numbers currently sit at 13.8 points, 3.7 rebounds, 2 assists and 12.9 efficiency rating.
And there have been some ridiculous individual seasons along the way.
In 2022 with Oostende, Randolph averaged 18.1 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.2 assists, finishing third in the competition in scoring. His Round of 16 alone produced 20, 35, 12 and 12 points across four games, including a ridiculous 35-point, 4-rebound, 2-assist performance against Unicaja on 12-of-17 shooting.
That kind of form earned him a move to Jerusalem, where he was named in the BCL Star Lineup Second Team, two seasons on the bounce.
In 2023, Randolph averaged 15.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.4 assists and helped Jerusalem reach their first-ever BCL Final Four, eventually finishing second. In the Quarter-Finals series against AEK, he scored 12 points in Game 1, then exploded for 28 in Athens before putting up 25 in the deciding Game 3.
That run earned him the April MVP award.
And he didn't slow down. Randolph followed that with another 16.2-point season for Jerusalem in 2024.
He's yet to win the BCL, which is the obvious hole in his resume. But when you combine the longevity, the scoring numbers, the sheer number of big games and his ability to carry offences for multiple clubs, it's difficult to leave him outside the Top 10.
And, frankly, if you need a bucket in the BCL, Levi Randolph has spent a decade proving he can get you one. Don't be surprised if we see Randolph back in the BCL soon and reminding anyone who might've forgotten why he's made it this high up the list.
#8 Joe Ragland (Avellino, Hapoel Holon, Peristeri)
I am first all-time for double-doubles with 16, and all of those were points and assists, so I'm also second all-time for assists with 516 and sixth all-time for points with 942. Who am I?
I am Joe Ragland, of course. Has anyone ever seemed so at ease controlling entire games from the point?
Ragland's BCL career numbers are almost comical: 14.3 points, 3.5 rebounds, 7.8 assists and 17.5 efficiency rating across his four BCL campaigns. He played for Avellino, Hapoel Holon and Peristeri, and his 7.8 assists per game are comfortably the best career average of anyone in our Top 50 all-time.
And then there are the records.
Ragland holds the single-game record for assists with 18 for Holon against Legia Warszawa. He also became the first player ever to record a 25-point, 15-assist game for Peristeri against Rytas Vilnius in January 2024.
2023 saw Ragland become the only player to win the BCL's MVP of the Month award twice in the same season, taking home the October and January awards. In January alone, he had a 12-point, 14-assist game against Igokea, followed by 20 points and 13 assists in Game 2, before producing 27 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists against Strasbourg.
And then, just when you thought there was nothing left for him to prove, he did it again with Peristeri.
In the 2024 Play-Ins, Ragland delivered that historic 25-point, 15-assist performance against Rytas and then finished the series with 17 points, 10 assists and 6 rebounds in the deciding game. Those performances were enough to earn him his second BCL Star Lineup selection, after he was first selected in 2022.
There are players on this list with more titles. There are players with bigger scoring numbers.
But nobody has orchestrated the BCL quite like the maestro, Uncle Joe Ragland.
#7 Vitor Benite (UCAM Murcia, San Pablo Burgos)
If there is one word that should probably be attached to Vitor Benite's BCL career, it's impact.
Benite was the captain and spiritual leader of a Burgos team that went from Qualifying Rounds to our first-ever back-to-back champions in 2020 and 2021.
And he didn't simply ride along for those two championships. He was the guy Burgos trusted when the game got tight, the guy taking the big shots and, eventually, the guy lifting the trophy as captain.
His numbers tell you why.
Across his BCL career, Benite averaged 13.1 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2 assists and 11 efficiency rating, with his best season coming in 2021 when he put up 15.3 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.9 assists.
And his 2021 Play-Off run was outrageous.
Benite entered the Final 8 having already established himself as one of the competition's great big-game scorers. He scored 26 points against Hapoel Holon in the Quarter-Finals, added 16 in the Semi-Finals against Strasbourg and then put up 15 points in the Final against Pinar Karsiyaka as Burgos won the championship again.
Those performances earned him the 2021 Final 8 MVP award.
And the longevity wasn't just about scoring.
Before the 2021 Final, Benite was already the all-time leading scorer in the BCL Play-Offs, with 240 points, and he had scored in double figures in 13 consecutive BCL games - the longest such streak in competition history at the time.
He's also part of one of the greatest wing combinations the BCL has seen, alongside Thad McFadden. The pair led Burgos to those consecutive titles, with McFadden taking the 2020 Final 8 MVP and Benite taking the award in 2021.
Two championships. A Final 8 MVP. Captain of a dynasty.
Vitor Benite wasn't just another band member.
He was the lead guitar ripping a solo to steal the show.
#6 T.J. Shorts II (Telekom Baskets Bonn)
At #6 we have a man who is Shorts by name, but without question one of the tallest tasks any BCL defense has ever had to surmount.
T.J. Shorts arrived in the BCL with Telekom Baskets Bonn and immediately turned the competition upside down.
In his only BCL season, Shorts averaged 19.5 points, 3.6 rebounds, 6.8 assists and 18.9 efficiency rating across 17 games. Those numbers earned him the MVP of the Season award, a place in the BCL Star Lineup First Team and, most importantly, a BCL championship.
And then came the Final Four.
Shorts scored 21 points in the Semi-Finals against Unicaja as Bonn survived 69-67, before producing one of the greatest individual Final performances in BCL history.
Twenty-nine points.
That earned him the Final Four MVP and the distinction of being the only player IN BCL HISTORY to sweep the Season MVP and Final Four MVP in the same season.
Bonn had waited 28 years for the first major trophy in club history. Shorts had arrived in Germany after climbing the European ladder from Latvia and the FIBA Europe Cup. By the end of the night in Malaga, he had changed the course of Bonn's history and the course of history in this competition.
One season is obviously a limitation when we're talking about an all-time list...
But when we are talking about the most impactful, individual season in BCL history, that is enough to get you in our top six.
The Basketball Champions League's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA or the Basketball Champions League.
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