Aydin Ors was the head coach who put Anadolu Efes Istanbul on the European basketball map in the 1990s.
Legend: Aydin Ors, Anadolu Efes Istanbul
Ors joined Efes in 1981 as a youth coach and a decade later, in 1992, took over the bench of the senior team. Before Ors became head coach, Efes had won just three Turkish League titles and had never advanced beyond the quarterfinals group stage in any European competition.
Ors immediately led Efes to a Turkish League championship and reached the 1993 Saporta Cup final. They lost 50-48 against Aris Thessaloniki that night, but the fuse of ambition to go far in European competition had been lit at Efes.
Coach Ors guided Efes to an undefeated 1992-93 season in the Turkish League and was on the bench when Efes made its EuroLeague debut in the 1993-94 season, coming within a single win of reaching the Final Four. Ors would guide Efes to Turkish League and Turkish Cup doubles in 1994, 1996 and 1997 and to another Turkish Cup in 1998, by which time the club was already making Turkish basketball history at an international level.
The club's most memorable achievement of that era came during the 1995-96 season when Efes lifted the Korac Cup, Europe's second-tier competition at the time. In doing so, Efes became the first Turkish club in any major team sport to win a European title. With Petar Naumoski, Conrad McRae, Ufuk Sarica and a young Mirsad Turkcan as his key players, Efes beat Olimpija Milan in the two-game, total-points finals on an aggregate score of 146-145 to change Turkish basketball forever.
Ors would go on to lead Efe to three more playoff appearances in the EuroLeague before he left the club early in the 1999-2000 season. He was replaced by Ergin Ataman, who took the team to the 2000 EuroLeague Final Four, another first for a Turkish club, later the same season. Ors soon led the Turkish national team to a historic silver medal at EuroBasket 2001 and eventually coached Fenerbahce Istanbul, as well.
Ataman and Oktay Mahmuti, another of his former assistants, have coached Efes for the better part of the last two decades, showing that the legacy of success that he brought to the club can still be felt today thanks to the inspirational influence of the great Aydin Ors.