2016-17

13/07/2017

Season 16-17 will remain in the history of Taronja as the most important season in our history. It was the season in which the 30th Anniversary was commemorated, with a series of events that helped to value the club's history from the beginning.

 

In the sport side, Jon Stefansson, Vladimir Lucic, John Shurna, Justin Hamilton and Jordi Trias left the team, in addition to Carles Duran on the bench as an assistant coach. The team includes Jaume Ponsarnau as second coach, Joan Sastre from Zaragoza, Vladimir Jankovic from Panathinaikos, John Bryant from Bayern Munich and Pierre Oriola from Sevilla.

 

Vive, Diot, Van Rossom, Rafa, Sato, San Emeterio, Sikma or Dubljevic and with Pedro Martínez in their second season, will be presented to a Fonteta who will return to see historical on the court as Brad Branson, Bernard Hopkins, Dejan Tomasevic, Flo Pietrus or Vule Avdalovic on a day to remember the 30th anniversary.

 

The season will begin with changes, Jankovic and Bryant leave the team, to which comes the Ukrainian Slava Kravtsov. Once stability is restored, the team will start to aim high, leading a good line in both the League Endesa and the Eurocup.

 

The good march in the League Endesa will help to become head of series in the Glass of the King of Vitoria. 4 days of a high level basketball in which Valencia Basket beats Herbalife Gran Canaria and Barça Lassa in the semifinals, and only falls to Real Madrid in a spectacular final that will be decided in the last moments.

 

The European season also achieves an excellent height, getting the best Top16 of the whole competition and securing the field factor in all the qualifiers. The injuries of Kravtsov, Diot and Vives low a team that makes an extraordinary effort to overcome in the quarterfinals to the millionaire Khimki of Moscow and in semifinals to the fearsome Hapoel Jerusalem of Amare 'Stoudemire. La Fonteta will be decisive in the third games, in what was called the #CalderaTaronja. A face-to-face final against Unicaja will be resolved in the final minutes of the third match at Fonteta in a match of bad memory. The Eurocup was going to Malaga in the second end of the year.

 

To help the team, there will be a new addition, the American Mike Tobey, who will help at specific times the group.

 

A season of such a level kept to the end the biggest surprise of all. The team manages to remake the great stick of the Eurocup and faces the PlayOff with third place finish in Regular League. A tough quarter-final between Barça Lassa will be resolved in the final seconds of the third and final in the Fonteta. The pass to the semifinals was a fact, the fourth consecutive.

 

Baskonia waited us in the semifinals without the home advantage. A tought first game in Vitoria manages to advance us with a sensational San Emeterio. Although the locals will match one in the second, the Fonteta comes up and gets the two home games to stay home to the local delirium. Bojan Dubljevic grabs the microphone in the celebration on track, Valencia Basket returned to the end of the Endesa League 14 years later. As if it were not enough, in parallel, Real Madrid is imposed on Unicaja, granting the Euroleague place for the season 17-18 to Valencia Basket.

 

And the final, with two initial matches in Madrid tremendously matched. The locals would advance in the first, but in the second, Valencia Basket would take a match that will be remembered by an acrobatic basket of Bojan Dubljevic that would be definitive in the fate of the final. The series traveled to Valencia with 1-1 and with two matches to dream. In the third, after overcoming a bad start, Valencia Basket made a great second part beating by 17 points. Everything was ready for a marked day in the calendar, on June 16, 2017, fourth game of the final. In a Fonteta where a soul could not fit, the second quarter marked the way, getting rents higher than 20 points. Despite Madrid's push, Valencia Basket closes the game and the league, and begins the great celebration, invasion of track and party until the wee hours of the morning to celebrate the most important day in 30 years of club history.


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