Vote for the best All-EuroLeague First Team in history: 2016 vs. 2007

We continue with the second round of our matchups as we seek to crown the greatest All-EuroLeague First Team! This time it's 2016 against 2007!

Each season, the top five players in Europe’s premier basketball competition are recognized with All-EuroLeague First Team honors. Over the past quarter century, these elite selections have showcased a who’s who of basketball legends, from rising stars to Hall of Famers and everything in between.

This summer, we're putting them all head-to-head to answer one big question: Which All-EuroLeague First Team stands above the rest?

We seeded all 24 teams into a bracket created by our panel of in-house EuroLeague experts.

Several times a week, we’ll reveal a new matchup on the official EuroLeague Instagram account, where you can vote for your favorite. In the first round, eight teams were eliminated and now 16 remain. Who will you vote into the quarterfinals?

2016

Milos Teodosic, CSKA Moscow (age 28)
Nando De Colo, CSKA Moscow (age 28)
Malcolm Delaney, Lokomotiv (age 27)
Jan Vesely, Fenerbahce (age 26)
Ioannis Bourousis, Baskonia (age 33)

2007

Dimitris Diamantidis, Panathinaikos (age 27)
Theo Papaloukas, CSKA (age 30)
Juan Carlos Navarro, Barcelona (age 26)
Trajan Langdon, CSKA (age 31)
Luis Scola, Baskonia (age 27)
Nikola Vujcic, Maccabi (age 28)

The oddity of this matchup is that – for the only time in EuroLeague history – the 2007 team had six members. There was a tie in the voting between Dimitris Diamantidis and Theo Papaloukas and both were named to the All-EuroLeague First Team. For our exercise, we will only count one of them. You can choose which one for your vote.

The big similarity between these teams is the three-guard lineups. Team 2007 has better shooting on the wings with Navarro and Langdon, while 2016 has better passing on the wings with De Colo and Delaney. For the main ball-handler role, Diamantidis's suffocating defense might cause trouble for Teodosic, but we could consider their duel a wash.

In the paint, Team 2007 has a more dangerous offensive pairing with Scola one of the best low-post operators in EuroLeague history and Vujcic among the best passing bigs ever. Vesely's size and athleticism could help him against Scola, and Bourousis has the body to muscle up Vujcic, however, Scola and Vujcic are not players one can stop easily one-on-one. And their basketball IQ combined with the shooting strokes of the players on the wings give 2007 a huge advantage.

Team 2016 has a dynamic Vesely, but not one who could generate a lot of points by himself, while Bourousis, who had a monster season, would have trouble against a prime Vujcic – who authored the EuroLeague’s first triple-double that season.

All the matchups going forward will be close. Team 2016 certainly has more pace and athleticism, but I think Team 2007 has better defense and structure plus a wily frontcourt, which gives it the edge. Incidentally, I asked two different AI formats to break down this matchup. Both declared 2007 the winner, one by a score of 84-79 and the other 87-81, with Navarro the imaginary MVP.