The Turkish team played with great discipline and physicality to subdue Monaco
Defense delivered another title to Fenerbahce
Artikel
3 Lesezeit
There’s an old saying you might just have heard once or twice over the years: "Offense wins games, but defense wins championships."
And that old truism was demonstrated once again as Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul clamped down on AS Monaco to take the club’s second championship with a defense-dominated 70-81 victory in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night.
After limiting Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens’s explosive offense to 76 points in Friday’s semifinal, the Turkish team reached an ever higher defensive level in the title decider.
The numbers speak for themselves: Monaco could only make 16 of its 42 two-point attempts (38.1%), recorded more turnovers (14) than assists (13), and mustered a team PIR of just 61.
Fenerbahce’s defense was particularly fierce during the most important moments of the game. Monaco scored just one field goal in the last 4 minutes of the second quarter, as the Turkish team grabbed the momentum to take a lead it would hold for the vast majority of the second half.
Game Videos
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Top 5 Plays | Championship Game | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
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AS Monaco-Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul | Championship Game Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:21
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Hall throws it down! Motorola Magic Moment of the Night
- 00:09
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Calathes creates for Diallo! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:10
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Hall’s crazy putback! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:11
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Hayes-Davis denies Theis! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:19
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Diallo beats the buzzer again! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:16
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Diallo beats the buzzer! Motorola Magic Moment
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Championship Game Talk with Wade Baldwin
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Championship Game Talk with Jaron Blossomgame
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Mic'd Up: Alpha Diallo and Thomas Walkup | 2025 EuroLeague Semifinals
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Mic'd Up: Nigel Hayes-Davis | 2025 EuroLeague Semifinals
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Olympiacos Piraeus-AS Monaco | Semifinal Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:39
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Showtime by Monaco! Motorola Magic Moment of the Night
- 00:24
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James with a sublime dish! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:18
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Diallo skies for the slam! Motorola Magic Moment
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Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul-Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens | Semifinal Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:31
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Hall on the highlight reel! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:11
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Baldwin feeds Melli for the slam! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:13
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Baldwin drives to dunk! Motorola Magic Moment
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At the Final Four: Devon Hall, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul
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At the Final Four: Matthew Strazel, AS Monaco
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Tarik Biberovic joined by two surprise guests on pre-Final Four EuroLeague & Friends podcast
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Mike James appears on the EuroLeague & Friends podcast... with a surprise guest!
- 00:16
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Diallo posterizes Parker! Motorola Magic Moment of the Night
- 00:44
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Mike James: 'We like to make it tough'
- 01:00
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Georgios Papagiannis: 'I was staying ready'
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AS Monaco-FC Barcelona | Playoffs Game 5 Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:10
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James & Papagannis connection! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:12
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Papagiannis dunks off a James dish! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:13
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Blossomgame flies for the put-back slam! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:10
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Diallo turns defense to offense! Motorola Magic Moment
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FC Barcelona-AS Monaco | Playoffs Game 4 Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:20
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Diallo's big dunk! Motorola Magic Moment of the Night
- 00:13
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James finds Theis! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:10
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Blossomgame's two-handed dunk! Motorola Magic Moment
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FC Barcelona-AS Monaco | Playoffs Game 3 Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:15
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Diallo's big block! Motorola Magic Moment
- 01:10
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Nigel Hayes-Davis: 'We look forward to Abu Dhabi'
- 01:53
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Tarik Biberovic: 'I worked all my life for these moments'
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Paris Basketball-Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul | Playoffs Game 3 Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:10
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Pierre and Birch combine to perfection! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:14
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Fener’s perfect team play! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:56
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Alpha Diallo: 'It's really hard to beat us'
- 00:27
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Monaco Showtime! Motorola Magic Moment of the Night
- 01:15
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Mam Jaiteh: 'If we play like this defensively, we will do good'
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AS Monaco-FC Barcelona | PO Game 2 Highlights | 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague
- 00:12
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Tarpey’s big driving dunk! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:28
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Jaiteh’s poster dunk! Motorola Magic Moment
- 00:17
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From defense to slam-dunk offense! Motorola Magic Moment
And later, when the fourth quarter started with Fener leading by just 3, the Roca Team was held to just one field goal and 4 total points in the first 5:47 of the crucial final period, allowing Saras Jasikevicius’s men to establish a double-digit margin that would ultimately prove decisive.
Wade Baldwin – one of six Fener players to snare a steal on the night – believed that crucial run in the opening stages of the fourth quarter resulted from his team’s mental focus. “Monaco is going to play the way Monaco plays, they’re going to rough you up,” he said.
“We just stayed composed, we made good plays, got big rebounds and everybody stepped up defensively. That’s not an easy team to guard, but we did our job.”
Baldwin’s job was perhaps the most difficult of them all as he matched up against Monaco superstar Mike James, but he helped restrict the league’s all-time leading scorer to just 6 of 19 field goal attempts and only 2 assists.
Baldwin had words of immense respect for his adversary, saying: “The first name I heard [when I came to Europe] was Mike James. He’s considered one of the best American guards to play in EuroLeague. And to play against him in the final, to compete against him, to guard him, and to beat him…you can’t want anything more than that.”
Another crucial player for Fenerbahce’s defensive efforts was Nicolo Melli, whose modest numbers (5 points, 3 rebounds and 1 steal) don’t even come close to telling the story of his disruptive impact on Monaco’s offensive efforts.
And he said that he believes the team’s spirit made the difference: “We definitely won it with defense, but we also won it with character. We were down by [9] in the first half.
“These games are all about emotions, thoughts, feeling, momentum. But we were able to stay together and finished the half up, and after that I think we kept the control of the game in the second half.”
It’s a long-awaited first EuroLeague title for Melli, whose first spell with Fenerbahce started just after the team’s 2017 triumph.
And the 34-year-old was emotional as he reflected on the achievement, telling the EuroLeague YouTube channel’s postgame show: “Without being dramatic, I know what I’ve been through sport-wise, and being able to come back to Fener – where I always felt beloved – and being able to win the championship in the first year is just amazing.
“As players, we sacrifice a lot – time with the family, summers. You sacrifice for something, and today this something came.”
A sweet something that Fener and its fans will remember forever.