Game 5: A new normal or a return to old ways?

Two final teams will book their tickets to Abu Dhabi tonight

The two best words in European basketball: Game 5. This Tuesday night it’s win or go home time, with the final two spots at the 2025 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four set to be confirmed.

In the early tipoff (19:00 CEST), there’s AS Monaco against FC Barcelona. Then at 20:45 CEST, Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens faces Anadolu Efes Istanbul. The winner of each Game 5 will join Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul and Olympiacos Piraeus in Abu Dhabi.

Since the 2008-09 season the EuroLeague has adopted a best-of-five series format, with tonight’s two games being the 22nd and 23rd time that it has gone to five games. It had been one-way traffic in these games for years, however, with the home team going 18-0 in series deciders going into the 2023-24 campaign.

It looked like the pattern was set to continue in the 2024 playoffs, as Panathinaikos defeated Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv 81-72 in Game 5 on May 7 to guarantee its place at the Final Four. But one night later, on May 8, everything flipped upside down.

In a game that went right down to the wire, Fenerbahce escaped from Monaco with a 79-80 victory and in doing so became the first-ever road team to win a Game 5.

Then, a couple of hours later, Olympiacos repeated that same feat by triumphing 59-63 at Barcelona. After 19 straight wins for the home team, two victories in a row for the road club.

Ahead of tonight’s games, Monaco will be eager to learn from last year’s heartbreak against a Barcelona side that has played more Game 5s than anyone else in EuroLeague history (seven).

But this is a situation Mike James and co. have got used to, having reached Game 5 in all four of the club’s playoff series to date. Barcelona is 4-3 in these situations, while Monaco is 1-2.

At OAKA, Panathinaikos fans will remember the celebrations that followed its Game 5 win over Maccabi last year and have high hopes about doing the same once again. Curiously, the two previous times it hosted a Game 5 came against Maccabi (2012, 2024), and both times it advanced.

For Efes, its last two Game 5s in Greece did not go to plan as it twice fell to Olympiacos (2013, 2017). That said, the Turkish side is 2-2 all-time in Game 5s and won at home in the two most recent Game 5s it played – against Barcelona in 2019 and Real Madrid in 2021.

Tonight’s two games are going to be packed with high-quality action, heaps of emotion, and tons of drama. Will we see a new normal, with road teams triumphing again, or a return to old ways? We'll find out in a few hours' time.