PBC CSKA Moscow

• 1. Introduction

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  PBC CSKA Moscow lost its place in Europe's top basketball competition on the 28th of February 2022. EuroLeague Basketball suspended every Russian team that day, over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The suspension cut off a club that had spent nearly a century working its way up through Soviet and Russian basketball. How did a team that began inside a military sports department become one of the continent's most decorated clubs? Why has its name changed so many times over the decades? And what happened to a roster built from players across many countries once war reached the locker room?

• 2. A Red Army Beginning

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  On the 29th of April 1923, soldiers and sportsmen played a football match for the top spot in Moscow. Out of that contest came a club then known as OPPV, a Russian phrase, Опытно-показательная военно-спортивная площадка всевобуча, naming a department within the General military education service. That department grew out of the pre-revolutionary Community of Amateur Skiers.

  The basketball side's first success came at the 1924 Soviet League championship, which pitted cities against each other rather than clubs. Two more championships followed, in 1928 and in 1935. By 1938 the Soviet League had shifted to a club format, and the team, now called CDKA, meaning the Central House of the Red Army, made its debut in that new setup. Vasily, Stalin's son, then founded a club called VVS MVO, and CDKA soon merged with it. By the end of the Great Patriotic War, the club had become one of the most respected teams in Soviet basketball.

  In 1953 and 1954 the club carried the name CDSA, the Central House of the Soviet Army. Between 1955 and 1960 it was known as CSK MO. In 1960 it took its present name, CSKA, the Central Sports Club of the Army.

  Under that new name, CSKA won the FIBA European Champions Cup, the forerunner of today's EuroLeague, in 1961, 1963-1969 and 1971. At home, the club captured the Soviet League championship twenty-four times, from 1945 through 1990. The Soviet era for the club closed as the country itself came apart, and Russian professional basketball would open a new chapter.

• 3. The Long Climb Back

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  CSKA advanced to the EuroLeague Final Four eighteen times over the 21st century. A first European title, though, took over a decade of Russian independence to arrive. CSKA won the Russian League title every year from 1992 through 2000, and again every year from 2003 to 2008. The club also reached the 1996 EuroLeague Final Four and the 2001 SuproLeague Final Four. It returned to the EuroLeague Final Four again in 2003-2004 and 2005, without winning the title in any of those three trips.

  In the 2004-05 season, CSKA lost a home semifinal to Spain's TAU Cerámica, then lost the third-place game to Greek club Panathinaikos. That result dropped CSKA into the EuroLeague's second tier of seeded teams for the following season's draw. The team also lost a game in that year's Russian League finals series but still won the Russian title.

  In 2006, CSKA qualified for the 2004-05 EuroLeague Top 16 by finishing third in its group. It then finished at the top of that Top 16 group, missing a perfect record only in its final game, against Tau. At the 2006 Final Four, CSKA became the only club to sweep a best-of-three quarterfinal series, beating Turkish power Efes Pilsen. The team then beat Barcelona in the semifinals before facing Maccabi Tel Aviv, of Israel's Basketball Super League, in the final. On the 30th of April 2006, in Prague, CSKA beat Maccabi 73-69, even though the two clubs' overall head-to-head record had long favored the Israelis.

  In 2007, CSKA met Panathinaikos in the final, at the Nikos Galis Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens. That site had been designated as the Final Four host more than a year earlier. Panathinaikos won the game, 93-91, on its own home floor. In 2008, CSKA beat Maccabi again, 91-77 in Madrid, in a rematch of the 2006 final. That title put the club in sole possession of second place among Europe's all-time top-tier champions. A year later, in Berlin, CSKA lost a rematch of the 2007 final to Panathinaikos, 73-71. Between 2003 and 2010, CSKA reached eight consecutive EuroLeague Final Fours, an all-time record.

  On the 14th of October 2008, the club played an NBA preseason game against the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

• 4. Agony Against Olympiacos

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  Olympiacos beat CSKA in the EuroLeague final in 2012, then eliminated the team again in the 2013 and the 2015 playoffs. CSKA also suffered a shocking upset loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2014. The club did collect third-place finishes in 2010-2013 and 2015, but the EuroLeague crown kept slipping away.

  CSKA won the Russian League title every season from 2009 through 2018. After the VTB United League began in 2008, CSKA dominated it, winning ten of its first eleven seasons: 2010, then every year from 2012 through 2019, and again in 2021. From 2009 onward, CSKA reached the EuroLeague Final Four every year except 2011.

  The club then beat its own record by reaching nine consecutive Final Fours from 2012 to 2021, though the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 situation.

• 5. Champions Again

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  At the 2016 Final Four in Berlin, CSKA beat Fenerbahçe 101-96 after overtime to win its seventh EuroLeague championship. Nando de Colo, the team's star that season, was named both the EuroLeague's Most Valuable Player and the Final Four's Most Valuable Player.

  In 2016-17, CSKA reached the Final Four again but lost to Olympiacos in the semifinals, then beat Real Madrid for third place. In 2017-18, CSKA finished the regular season with a 24-6 record before a rough Final Four: a semifinal loss to Real Madrid and a third-place defeat to BC Žalgiris. That same season, in the VTB United League, CSKA won its ninth title by beating Khimki 95-84 in the 2018 Final Four.

  CSKA finished second in the 2018-19 regular season, reaching the Final Four for the seventeenth time in the 21st century. In Vitoria-Gasteiz, the club came back during the semifinals against Real Madrid, then beat Anadolu Efes in the final to claim its eighth European title. CSKA also won the VTB United League that year, sweeping Khimki 3-0 in the finals.

  The 2019-20 season brought a different kind of trouble for the defending champion. CSKA played steadily until November, then lost four games in a row and fell as low as sixth place. CSKA and every other team stopped playing after the 28th round, with no champion declared, and CSKA stood behind Khimki in the VTB standings when the season stopped. The EuroLeague season was halted too, with no winner announced there either.

  In the 2020-21 season, CSKA again led the EuroLeague standings for much of the year. Repeated conflicts among coach Dimitrios Itoudis, the club's management and Mike James led James, the team leader, to leave the team in March 2021. CSKA lost first place in the standings to FC Barcelona, but still reached the EuroLeague Final Four. CSKA lost to Anadolu Efes in the semifinals there, and to EA7 Emporio Armani Milan in the third-place game, finishing the season in fourth place. In the VTB United League that year, despite finishing the regular season in just fourth place, CSKA beat Nizhny Novgorod 2-1 in the quarterfinals, regular-season winners Zenit St. Petersburg 3-1 in the semifinals, and UNICS Kazan 3-0 in the finals to win the league again.

• 6. The Club Beyond The Court

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  CSKA has won eight EuroLeague titles, one NEBL title, fifty-three home league titles, seven home cups, two home Supercups and twelve VTB United League titles. That record makes CSKA the most successful basketball club in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and one of the most successful clubs in Europe.

  Players who wore the CSKA jersey over the decades include Sergei Belov, Andrei Kirilenko, Miloš Teodosić and Nando de Colo. The full roster across its history has included names from across Europe, the Americas and beyond. Alexander Gomelsky, later inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, coached CSKA for more than twenty years.

  The club has built a reputation as one of the richest sports organizations in Europe. It was previously owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, and is now owned by Norilsk Nickel.

  CSKA played all of its home games, in both the domestic league and in Europe, at the 5,500-seat Universal Sports Hall from 1979 to 2015. The club also played one home EuroLeague game at the 13,344-seat Megasport Arena, on the 23rd of January 2008. From the 2015-16 season, Megasport Arena became the regular home for EuroLeague games, while the Universal Sports Hall continued to host VTB United League matches. During the 2019-20 EuroLeague season, Kaliningrad's Yantarny Sports Palace substituted as the venue for CSKA's round of 16 and round of 17 home games.

• 7. When War Reached The Roster

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  Tornike Shengelia, from Georgia, left CSKA in early 2022 and said the decision was not difficult at all. "Everyone says it was a difficult or big decision, but it was not," he said. He said he felt his family was threatened by the war, even though the fighting was not in Moscow, and that he wanted to send them away before he departed too.

  "I can't reconcile myself playing for a Russian team," said Johannes Voigtmann, from Germany, who also left the club. He said the Russian president was responsible for a brutal war that was killing innocent people in Ukraine and forcing millions from their homes.

  Gabriel Lundberg of Denmark, Marius Grigonis of Lithuania, Italian-American Daniel Hackett and Russian-American Joel Bolomboy left the club as well. Kevin Pangos, who is Canadian-Slovenian and had signed with CSKA one day before the invasion began, never joined the team at all.

  CSKA told the departing players that leaving violated their contracts, but reached termination agreements with all of them except Bolomboy. FIBA later gave Bolomboy a letter of clearance to sign with Olympiacos Piraeus once his CSKA contract expired in the summer of 2022. CSKA said it planned to sue him for breaching the agreement.

  On the 22nd of March 2022, CSKA, UNICS Kazan and Zenit St. Petersburg were disqualified from the EuroLeague altogether.

  In October 2022, CSKA president Andrey Vatutin said owners and sponsors were in crisis and not interested in spending big money on the VTB league. He said the club's budget had been reduced, and that CSKA's role in world basketball was declining now that it had left the international scene.

  CSKA has long dominated the VTB United League, winning all but three of its titles to date. In the 2022 finals, CSKA led Zenit St. Petersburg 3-1 before losing three straight games, and Zenit took the series 4-3. It was the first time since the 2010-11 season that CSKA had failed to win the VTB title. Greek head coach Dimitrios Itoudis left the club in June 2022, immediately after that final loss to Zenit, with one year remaining on his contract.