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Despite being a virtually unknown team to most young European basketball fans in Europe, VEF Riga has been one of the best Latvian clubs since its founding in 1958. Some of the best players in Latvian history, such as Valdis Valters, Igor and Raimons Miglieniks, Gundars Vetra, Karlis Muiznieks, Ainars Bagatskis, Janis Krumins, Cezars Ozere, Bruno Drake or Juris Kalnins, have played for VEF from 1958 until the club disappeared in 1992, after many years of being one of the standard-bearers in the Soviet Union. For more than a decade, Valters was the heart and soul of the team, helping VEF to get back to the Soviet Union elite in 1977 and representing the club in the Soviet Union national team as its starting playmaker. Refounded in 2007 with Valters now as head coach, VEF has a chance to play the Eurocup if it downs Panellinios in the qualifying round. As one of the fastest-rising teams in Europe, VEF is ready to match its own tradition.
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 A sign hangs in old Jazine Hall, the former home court of KK Zadar for 40 years, that says it all about basketball's status in the picturesque town on the Adriatic Coast: "God created man, and Zadar created basketball." That assertion is not too far from the truth, either. Organized basketball has been played in Zadar since the 1920s, almost a full century.
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 In just two decades, Spirou Basket Charleroi has gone from virtually unkown to become a reference point in Belgian and European basketball. Founded just 20 years ago, Spirou has forged its status as a team to beat in Belgium, and this season stands as one of five unbeaten clubs in the Eurocup right before the start of 2009.
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 Not many pro basketball teams anywhere bridged the 20th and 21st centuries with quite the same style as did KK Buducnost. The team from Podgorica, Montenegro, earned its name among the top clubs in Europe then by dominating the world-renowned Yugoslav League at the end of the 1990s and into the new millennium.
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 Looking back 20 years, few people would have expected Pamesa Valencia would become one of the biggest clubs in European basketball. Pamesa was virtually unknown in Europe until the mid-1990s, but since then has competed for continental trophies consistently.
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 Barons/LMT Riga has played an important role in the recent resurgence of basketball in Latvia and now the local champs are in the midst of a new challenge in their first season in Europe’s second competition. The start was rough with back-to-back games against proven powers Dynamo Moscow and Unics Kazan, but now Barons are ready to make some noise.
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 There is no time like the present for PGE Turow Zgorzelec, the most pleasant surprise in Europe's second competition last season. Nobody expected Turow to go far during its 2007-08 debut in the ULEB Cup, but the club beat all expectations with an unbelievable run to the Final Eight.
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