Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Valery HACHE / AFP 23:05 p.m., May 18, 2023

From Orthez in 1984 to Nanterre in 2015, four glorious and victorious European campaigns of French basketball clubs, before the Final Four of the Euroleague played by Monaco from Friday to Sunday in Kaunas, Lithuania. Back on these beautiful French countryside...

At a time when the "gang of potiches", famous Parisian robbers, the Elan Béarnais carried out a kind of hold-up on March 15, 1984: based in Orthez, 11,000 inhabitants (it will become Pau-Orthez only in the early 1990s), it places itself on the map of Europe by winning the Korac Cup (C3) eleven years after its rise in the elite.

AEK Athens, the Italians of Varese, king of Europe in the 1970s (five Champions Cup between 1970 and 1976) then Zadar (former Yugoslavia, now Croatia) and Antibes all fall at La Moutète, this covered market for ducks and poultry that serves as a basketball court on weekends. In the final in Coubertin, in front of an important Béarnaise colony mounted in Paris, Freddy Hufnaghel and his gang defeated Red Star Belgrade (97-73) to win the first trophy of the club led by Pierre Seillant and succeed Limoges, winner of the two previous editions.

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Limoges, Champions Cup 1993

In the early 1990s, CSP aimed higher and this Champions Cup of which it reached the semi-finals in 1990 against Split (former Yugoslavia / Croatia), led by its star player Toni Kukoc and its coach Bozidar Maljkovic. Two years later, the "Serbian sorcerer" arrives in Limoges with his method in which "the word fatigue is forbidden", as he tells it in the documentary of L'Équipe "Limoges 1993, the perfect shot".

It allows CSP to be embedded in the Final Four of the C1 in Athens in the middle of PAOK Thessaloniki, not far from its bases, Real Madrid of Lithuanian giant Arvydas Sabonis and Treviso Kukoc, future player of the Chicago Bulls. But the band to Richard Dacoury created the surprise against Real in the semi-final (62-52) then Treviso in the final (59-55), after a ball stolen by Frédéric Forte in Kukoc, to become, on April 15, 1993, the first French club champion of Europe all sports combined, a few weeks before OM in football.

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Limoges, Korac Cup 2000

Seven years later, the CSP writes another memorable page of its glorious history, facing another type of adversity: it is experiencing significant financial difficulties that have led most of the players in the squad to lower their salaries in an attempt to save the club.

On the field, Yann Bonato and Co. had a thunderous second half of the season, challenging themselves to win everything before the team broke up. Mission accomplished, with an improbable treble Championship-Cup of France-Korac Cup. The latter faced Malaga in the final by making the difference in Beaublanc in the first leg (80-58, 51-60 in Spain in the return). CSP will be administratively relegated to the second division a few weeks later.

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Nanterre, Eurochallenge 2015

The modest club of Hauts-de-Seine had signed a resounding feat two years earlier by becoming champion of France 2013 to everyone's surprise after having climbed all the levels of French basketball in a quarter of a century. He repeats in this season 2014-2015, after having done well in the previous year in the Euroleague, winner in the hall of FC Barcelona after having come close to the feat at home against CSKA Moscow.

Adversity is less in Eurochallenge, the third European competition, for Pascal Donnadieu's team, which wins its first European title after a breathtaking final against Trabzonspor (64-63), which hosts the Final Four. TJ Campbell (now in Cholet) missed his three-point shot with four seconds left at the buzzer but Johan Passave-Ducteil scrambled to grab the rebound and slip the ball to the same Campbell whose basket, 1/10th of a second from the siren, was validated after video refereeing. Two years later, the "JSF" won the European Cup, the fourth European competition.