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, and 30-21 here.
So, without further ado, let's jump into the next 10 names.
#20 Frank Bartley (AEK BC)
Up first for the top 20, we have a very recent addition to the BCL history roll - and a player who had arguably the most spectacular single season of any player this decade. Frank Bartley arrived in the BCL with AEK in Season X and immediately took over the competition, averaging 18.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 16.5 efficiency across 17 games.
Those numbers were enough to keep AEK winning all the way through the Regular Season and into the Play-Offs. Bartley was named to the Season X Star Lineup First Team and then went one step further, becoming the Season X MVP after leading AEK all the way to the BCL Final.
Bartley also ended the season with 314 points, becoming only the third player to reach 300 points in a single season under the current format (since 2020-21).
When we talk about impact, what we're talking about is Frank Bartley in the Round of 16, where AEK went a perfect 6-0 and Bartley averaged 22 points per game. He made 23 three-pointers during that stretch alone and finished the phase as its leading scorer.
There's obviously a longevity caveat here: Bartley doesn't have six or seven BCL seasons behind him as these rankings are being made.
But that's precisely why #20 feels like the right spot. If the criteria are team success, individual awards, longevity and impact, Bartley has two of those boxes absolutely covered - and the combination of BCL MVP + Star Lineup First Team + Final appearance in the last season is impossible to ignore.
#19 Chima Moneke (BAXI Manresa)
At #19, we have another one-season wonder who squeezed every last drop of impact out of his time in the BCL: Chima Moneke.
Moneke's one BCL season - but what a season it was - was all-action, all-character and all-entertainment. In 15 games for BAXI Manresa, he averaged 13.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 16.1 efficiency rating, numbers that were enough to earn him the 2022 BCL MVP award.
And it wasn't just about padding the box score.
Moneke was the embodiment of the Manresa style: physical, energetic, relentless and seemingly incapable of letting a loose ball hit the floor without throwing himself after it.
He was doing literally everything to win: defending, rebounding, running the floor and making plays in transition, while bringing the kind of intensity and personality that seemed to infect everyone around him with a belief that they could achieve anything. And they very nearly did.
His best basketball came at exactly the right time. Moneke was named MVP of April after helping Manresa reach the Final Four, including 24 points, 5 rebounds and 3 steals in just 24 minutes against Unicaja in Game 2 of the Quarter-Finals.
The only thing missing from his BCL résumé is the trophy. Manresa reached the Final, but lost to Tenerife, meaning Moneke's only BCL season ended with an MVP award and a runners-up medal.
But where Moneke makes up for his lack of longevity in the BCL, he makes up for it with his story, as he went straight to the NBA with the Sacramento Kings the following season. He has since gone on to represent his national team with Nigeria and grace Europe's biggest courts.
One season. One MVP. One Final Four. One unforgettable impact.
#18 RaiQuan Gray (AEK BC)
It takes a special player and an even more special person to change the course of a club the size of AEK. Think of it like steering an oil tanker. But that is exactly the player and person that Dragan Sakota decided RaiQuan Gray is.
It had been four years since AEK reached the BCL Final in 2020 when Sakota brought Gray to Athens and charged him with leading the team back to the Final Four and beyond. To complicate matters, in Gray's first season he was also a rookie in European basketball.
It didn't slow him down for a beat. In Season 9, Gray averaged 9.3 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.5 assists for AEK, and led them to a BCL Final.
Then came Season X.
Gray took another step forward, averaging 12.9 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 15.6 efficiency rating across 17 games, while earning a place in the BCL Star Lineup as AEK went back to the Final again.
What also makes Gray so special is that he doesn't really play any specific position all the time. At 203 centimeters and with a build like LeBron James, he can handle the ball, push in transition, create from the short roll, finish around the rim and then turn around and guard virtually anyone.
This is a player who can guard all five positions, while his ability to handle and create makes him a nightmare matchup offensively as well.
And defensively, he has become one of the defining players of the modern AEK team. At one stage of Season X, AEK were allowing just 0.92 points per 100 possessions with Gray leading the lineup, compared with 0.97 when he was on the bench.
He was playing around 30 minutes a night, so this wasn't a small-sample theatre either.
Then came the Round of 16, where Gray was named MVP of the phase after averaging the kind of all-round numbers that explain exactly why he's here.
For most of the season, Gray was the leading candidate for MVP of the Season and Defensive Player of the Season. That is what we mean when we say this list is about a player's impact on the game.
#17 Jerrick Harding (ERA Nymburk, Baxi Manresa, Rytas Vilnius)
Jerrick Harding is a BCL cheat code.
Just look at his numbers... Across his BCL career, Harding has averaged 17.2 points, 2.5 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 13.5 efficiency.
He has never needed a second invitation to come on the court and heat it up. His best season before the move to Rytas came with Nymburk in Season 6, when he averaged 20.8 points.
After that, he also put up 17.4 points for Manresa the following season.
But the real magic happened in Season X.
Harding led the league in scoring with 19.4 points, 2.4 rebounds and 2.4 assists for Rytas and earned a place in the BCL Star Lineup.
And if you watched him, none of this came as a surprise. Harding has a pedigree similar to Damian Lillard, after also playing his college ball at Weber State.
In fact, he actually overtook Lillard's scoring record during his time in the NCAA. Harding is rapid off the mark and even more shifty in his ability to change speed or direction. And let's not even talk about his ability to make tough shots and finish over shot-blockers.
We have seen scorers in the BCL before, but what sets Harding apart is what he did when the biggest stage arrived.
He scored 29 points in the Semi-Final of Season X against Tenerife to drag Rytas into the Championship Game, before scoring 16 points and dishing out 6 assists in the Final against AEK and steering them to a BCL title against the odds.
Remember, this was a Rytas club that had never previously gone beyond the Quarter-Finals. Harding wasn't named Final Four MVP - that honour went to his teammate Simonas Lukosius - but his 29-point Semi-Final was one of the defining individual performances of the entire tournament and one of the most iconic performances in BCL Final Four history.
Six seasons, three clubs, a BCL championship and an All-Star First Team selection. Is there even a debate here about Harding's place in the Top 20? Or should he just be ranked even higher?
#16 Aaron Doornekamp (Tenerife)
Aaron Doornekamp is the poster child for longevity and team achievements in the BCL. Tenerife were a behemoth of the BCL. It felt like a season would never pass without them at least reaching the Final Four, and they picked up two BCL titles along the way.
None of that would have happened without Aaron Doornekamp.
He was part of the original Tenerife championship team in 2017, then returned to the club after a spell away and became one of the defining veterans of the Tenerife dynasty.
History shows 20 games at 10.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists during that inaugural championship campaign, but his relentless consistency in knocking down triples, playing defence and crashing the glass were the real story.
Doornekamp is a connector. A shooter. A defender. A rebounder. And, perhaps most importantly for Tenerife, he was somebody Txus Vidorreta trusted in almost every possible situation.
As we opened with, his longevity was utterly absurd. Doornekamp has played nine BCL seasons, winning the competition twice in 2017 and 2022, and he was a vital member of Tenerife's roster throughout that entire period.
He is second all-time for three-pointers (191), third all-time for rebounds (479), and fourth all-time for appearances (114). There are players above him who have had bigger statistical peaks. There are players above him who have won individual awards.
But there aren't many who have been as consistent or as successful as Aaron Doornekamp.
#15 Dusan Sakota (AEK BC)
There is a very simple way of explaining Dusan Sakota's place in BCL history.
He is one of, if not the most important big-shot makers in AEK's history.
Sakota played three BCL seasons for AEK, appearing in 50 games and averaging 12.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 12.4 efficiency across the competition.
His best individual numbers came in 2017-18, when he averaged 13.5 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists, but it was the timing of those points that really defined him.
We dubbed Sakota Mr Fourth Quarter, and the numbers behind the nickname were absurd. During AEK's 2017-18 run to the title, Sakota shot 63 percent on twos, 47 percent from three, and posted a 67.2 percent effective field-goal percentage in the fourth quarter.
He also made huge shot after huge shot during AEK's improbable run to the Final Four. Who remembers that 3-ball against Medi Bayreuth in February 2018 to save their season and send them to the Play-Offs? We do; that's who, and we bet you do, too.
And, of course, AEK actually went on to win the whole thing.
Mike Green ultimately took the Final Four MVP award, but Sakota could just as easily have been the one collecting the award.
He also brought something that doesn't show up in the box score: personality and leadership. Sakota was the captain, the veteran and the guy who seemed completely comfortable taking responsibility when the pressure arrived.
By the start of the following season, he had already scored 482 BCL points, the second-highest total in the competition's history at that stage.
Sakota ended his BCL career with three seasons under his belt, two Star Lineup Second Team selections, a BCL title and a FIBA Intercontinental Cup gold medal. The definition of a Top 15 player all-time.
#14 Dylan Osetkowski (Unicaja)
Dylan Osetkowski is one of those players whose value becomes much more obvious the longer you watch him.
Like most players in that Ibon Navarro system at Unicaja, the raw numbers are solid rather than spectacular. Across his BCL career with Unicaja, he has averaged 9.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 10.9 efficiency rating, including 10.4 points and 4.4 rebounds during Unicaja's 2024 championship campaign, and 9.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2 assists during their second title run in 2025.
But Osetkowski is a walking mismatch. Off the court, he brought that Surfer Chic to the proceedings, and on the court, no matter how relaxed he appeared, the reality was a player ready at all times to demolish his opponent's offensive and defensive schemes.
He's big enough to play as a five, skilled enough to attack from the perimeter, comfortable shooting threes and clever enough as a passer to punish teams that send extra defenders towards him. He can also switch defensively and bring a physical edge that fits perfectly with Ibon Navarro's basketball.
And, most importantly, he was absolutely vital to both of Unicaja's back-to-back BCL championship teams.
His best BCL moment may actually have come before the second title. In the 2025 Semi-Final against AEK, Osetkowski produced a 14-point, 10-rebound double-double and was the decisive player in helping Unicaja survive the deafening atmosphere in Athens.
He then added 9 points and 5 rebounds in the Final as Unicaja became only the second team after Burgos to win the BCL in consecutive seasons.
And there is another piece of silverware that tells you something about his overall value. Osetkowski was named MVP of the 2024 FIBA Intercontinental Cup, averaging 11.7 points, 5 rebounds and 4.3 assists across the tournament and finishing the Final with 15 points, 4 rebounds and 3 steals.
Two BCL titles, two FIBA Intercontinental titles, an Intercontinental Cup MVP award, a BCL Star Lineup and a BCL Star Lineup in three seasons of BCL basketball.
That isn't even counting the domestic stuff he won in Spain... Just imagine what he'd have won if he hung around a bit longer.
#13 Keith Langford (AEK BC)
Keith Langford is undoubtedly one of the finest offensive talents to ever play in European club basketball. Maybe the best representation of that talent was his step-back jumper. It didn't matter which direction he went; it didn't matter how much the defense knew what to expect; the ball was going in the bucket nonetheless.
Langford was a player who specialized in making difficult shots look routine.
Across his two BCL seasons with AEK, he averaged 18.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 2020 before following it up with 17.5 points, 1.8 rebounds and 2 assists in 2021. The fact that his career BCL average was 17 points per game tells you just how dominant he was in those two seasons.
But his defining season was 2019-20.
Langford scored at least 18 points in 10 of his 15 appearances and had five games of 25 or more points - the most by any player in a single BCL season at that time. It earned him the MVP of the Season award and was probably the most definitive, all-ballot MVP award we have given out.
There was no mystery about how he did it. Langford was a player who consistently made the shots that defense actually wanted him to take: contested pull-ups, difficult isolations and late-clock attempts.
AEK and Langford ultimately fell short in the 2020 Final against San Pablo Burgos, but he ended his career a BCL MVP, a silver medalist and a member of the 2020 Star Lineup.
If this were purely a ranking of shot-making ability, Keith Langford would probably be even higher.
#12 Tyrese Rice (Brose Bamberg, AEK BC)
And now we come to the King in the Fourth, Tyrese Rice. He didn't just win the BCL MVP award in 2019.
He made it feel inevitable.
Rice put up 16.4 points and 4.4 assists for Brose Bamberg in the 2018-19 season, and created so many iconic moments.
He was named MVP of the Round of 16, then carried Bamberg through the Quarter-Finals against defending champions AEK with one of the great individual performances in BCL history. In the decisive second leg, Rice scored 25 points and 5 assists, including the left-handed floater with 5.5 seconds remaining that sent Bamberg to the Final Four.
That shot was the perfect representation of Rice as a player.
Undersized in height. Oversized in heart. Huge confidence. Difficult angle. Left hand. No hesitation. No question about the outcome.
Bamberg finished fourth that season, but Rice wasn't finished there.
He moved to AEK the following season and helped them reach the 2020 Final. In the Final Eight that year, he averaged 15.7 points and 4.7 assists, including 18 points and 5 assists in the Semi-Final against Zaragoza before scoring 17 points and dishing out 4 assists in the Final.
So the BCL CV reads: MVP, Star Lineup, silver medal, Round of 16 MVP, multiple iconic clutch shots and two seasons of elite production.
When you add that to his complete list of silverware across one of Europe's GOAT careers, we really were privileged to watch this man do his work in this league.
#11 Tim Abromaitis (Tenerife, Unicaja)
If we were ever to change the logo of this league to the silhouette of a player, it would probably be Tim Abromaitis shooting a corner three.
In fact, he's so deeply embedded in the history of this competition that by 2024 he became the first player to reach 100 BCL appearances.
And that longevity isn't just about showing up; it's about consistency.
Abromaitis was the embodiment of what made Tenerife basketball what it was: a big forward who can stretch the floor, rebound, make the extra pass, and fit around stars without needing the offence built around him.
That versatility has allowed him to remain useful through an absurd number of different Tenerife rosters. He played in eight BCL seasons, winning titles in 2017 and 2022, reaching the Final again in 2024 and eventually being selected to the BCL Team of the Decade Second Team.
By 2024, he had already reached his third BCL Final, joining Dejan Kravic as the players with the most Final appearances at that point. He's first in all-time rebounds (597), first in all-time performances (191), fifth in all-time scoring (1,025), seventh in all-time three-pointers (163), 10th all-time for steals (90), and 16th all-time in blocks (43).
And that's really the Abromaitis story. Always there and always important.
One BCL title, two BCL silver medals, one BCL Star Lineup, one FIBA Intercontinental title. Three Finals. Nearly 200 appearances. A place on one of the Teams of the Decade.
That's not just longevity.
That's BCL history.
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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