Two years after leaving as both the Turkish Airlines Euroleague champion and the Euroleague Basketball Alexander Gomelskiy Coach of the Year, coaching icon Dusan Ivkovic will return to the sidelines in the Euroleague with the announcement on Monday of his new two-year contract with Anadolu Efes Istanbul. Ivkovic, 70, is among the most experienced coaches in basketball history, with a career that has spanned five different decades since he followed his older brother Slobodan into the profession in 1978. Having racked up great success in his native Serbia, Greece and Russia, Ivkovic is the only head coach to have won all four major European club titles: the Euroleague, the Eurocup and the now-defunct Korac and Saporta cups. He stepped down as the head coach of Olympiacos Piraeus after winning his and the club's second Euroleague title with the Reds in 2012 in Istanbul. They had won the 1997 Euroleague title together in Rome, too. At Efes he takes over for Evangelos Angelou, who was his top assistant at Olympiacos and will remain with Ivkovic at Efes in a similar role.

"I’m glad to be a part of Anadolu Efes which is a reference club in Europe with its rich basketball heritage", Ivkovic said at the press conference in Istanbul. "I will focus on a younger generation of upcoming basketball players for Anadolu Efes, and also for Turkish basketball, and make sure they get enough playing time in the game."

Ivkovic has appeared in the Euroleague Final Four seven times with three teams: AEK Athens, Olympiacos and CSKA Moscow. He won the 1979 Korac Cup with Partizan Belgrade, the Saporta Cup in 1993 with PAOK Thessaloniki and 2000 with AEK, and the 2006 ULEB Cup with Dynamo Moscow. Ivkovic also has won the Greek and Russian League crowns three times each, the Yugoslav championship once and a total of six national cups between the three countries. Moreover, Ivkovic won the 1990 World Championships and three EuroBasket gold medals with the Yugoslavian national team. Considered a dean among basketball coaches, Ivkovic was honored by Euroleague Basketball in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest contributors to the first half-century of European club basketball.