Anadolu Efes Istanbul was founded in 1976 and needed just three years to start collecting titles. Efes won its first Turkish League trophy in 1979 and made it to the EuroLeague quarterfinals group stage the following season. More Turkish League crowns came in 1983 and 1984, but Efes did not become a dominant club and a European contender until the 1990s when it went on a glorious run and won the Turkish championship in five of six seasons through 1997 under the tutelage of Coach Aydin Ors. That's when Efes also put Turkey on the continental basketball map for good. In 1993, Larry Richard, Petar Naumoski and Ufuk Sarica took Efes to the Saporta Cup final, but Aris Thessaloniki escaped with a narrow win. In 1996, Efes became the first Turkish club to win a European title when Naumoski and Sarica joined forces with Conrad McRae and a young Mirsad Turkcan to lead Efes to the Korac Cup crown by downing Olimpia Milan in the finals. Efes soon became a EuroLeague regular and in 2000 the club achieved another first among Turkish teams by making the Final Four, a milestone it repeated in the 2001 SuproLeague with Hedo Turkoglu, Mehmet Okur, Predrag Drobnjak, Ibrahim Kutluay and Damir Mulaomerovic leading the way. Efes came within one shot of reaching the 2004 Final Four too, but was denied by Skipper Bologna’s Gianluca Basile. It was back dominating domestically during that span, in which Efes won four consecutive Turkish championships from 2002 through 2005. The club lifted Turkish Cups in 2006 and 2007 and did even better in 2009 by winning the Turkish League and Cup double, but had to wait until 2015 to capture another trophy – the Turkish Cup after beating archrival Fenerbahce in the final. Efes qualified for the EuroLeague Playoffs in 2013, but lost to eventual champion Olympiacos Piraeus in a classic series in the maximum five games. Two years later, Efes lost 3-1 in the playoffs to that season's champ, Real Madrid. In 2016-17, the squad coached by Velimir Perasovic reached the playoffs for the third time in five years thanks to a sixth-place finish in the regular season. Its series against Olympiacos was the only one to reach Game 5 that season, but Efes eventually fell to the Reds. Efes ended a three-year title drought with a Turkish Cup triumph in 2018, but the arrival of Larkin and Micic took the club to another level. Against all odds, Efes went from being last in the 2017-18 EuroLeague to runner-up a year later. Despite splitting the first two games of the best-of-five playoff against FC Barcelona Lassa and thus losing the home-court advantage, Larkin had 30 points in Game 3, which Efes won 68-102 in Spain, and 18 in do-or-die Game 5 to take his team to the Final Four for the first time since 2000. Then Efes downed Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul 73-92 behind 30 points from Larkin to reach the championship game. CSKA Moscow stood in its way, but Efes went home and completed a great season by lifting its first Turkish League title since 2009. The team edged rival Fenerbahce 4-3 in the title series. Larkin had 38 points in Game 5, as Efes exacted revenge from the Turkish Cup final. In the 2019-20 season, Efes led the Turkish League (21-2) and the EuroLeague (24-4) regular seasons when they were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That will make Efes hungrier than ever this season as the team looks determined to finally go all the way and lift the EuroLeague trophy.
Trophy Case
| EuroLeague: 2020-21 |
| Korac Cup: 1996 |
| Turkish National League: 1978-79, 1982-83, 1983-84, 1991-92, 1992-93, 1993-94, 1995-96, 1996-97, 2001-02, 2002-03, 2003-04, 2004-05, 2008-09, 2018-19, 2020-21 |
| Turkish National Cup: 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2015, 2018 |
| Turkish President Cup: 1986, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2015 |