The McDonald's Championship (sometimes called the McDonald's Open) was an international men's professional

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

club cup competition that featured a representative of the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball sports league, league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues i ...

(representing

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

) against champion club teams from

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, the National Basketball League (representing

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.5 million ...

), and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. The first competition was held in 1987 and continued annually after that until 1991, when the tournament switched to a biennial event. For the first two years, the men's national teams from

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

participated. In each of the nine years the McDonald's Championship was held, the title was won by a team from the NBA, but twice by a close margin. The first time was in the semifinals in 1990, when the

New York Knicks The New York Knickerbockers, shortened and more commonly referred to as the New York Knicks, are an American professional basketball team based in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The Knicks compete in the National Basketball Associat ...

trailed Italian club Scavolini Pesaro by three points (107–104) with only 30 seconds on the clock. After successfully defending, the Knicks won possession and Gerald Wilkins netted a three-pointer with eight seconds remaining to send the game into overtime. The other close game came the following year in 1991, when the

Los Angeles Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Lakers play their ...

defeated Spanish champions Montigalà Joventut by just two points (116–114). In 1999, the FIBA Asia basketball club champions, Sagesse Club, participated in the McDonald's Championship, the first and only time Asia was represented in the tournament. The McDonald's Championship was discontinued after 1999.

History

Names of the competition

* McDonald's Open: 1987–1993 * McDonald's Championship: 1995–1999

Media coverage

In the United States, ABC held the network television rights from 1987-1989.

Gary Bender Gary Nedrow Bender (born September 1, 1940) is a retired American sportscaster and 2008 inductee into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame. He officially retired, April 13, 2011, from Fox Sports Arizona after 18 years calling the NBA's Phoenix Sun ...

and Dick Vitale provided the commentary for ABC's broadcasts. Supplemental coverage was provided by TBS. Beginning in 1990, American network TV coverage moved over to NBC. NBC would continue to broadcast the finals of the McDonald's Championship through 1997. TNT exclusively covered the final McDonald's Championship event in 1999. Marv Albert, Doug Collins, and Hubie Brown were the commentators for TNT in 1999.

Format

After the first tournament (3 teams championship format), the competition was played in a single elimination format, with the winners of each match advancing to the next round.

Rules

The competition combined rules of both the NBA and the European leagues (

FIBA The International Basketball Federation (FIBA ; French: ) is an association of national organizations which governs the sport of basketball worldwide. Originally known as the (hence FIBA), in 1989 it dropped the word ''amateur'' from its nam ...

rules).

Results

MVPs

Finishes

Top 4 finishes by team

Top 4 finishes by country

Notes

References

External links

NBA International Pre-Season and Regular-Season Games
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mcdonald's Championship International club basketball competitions NBA vs FIBA Recurring sporting events established in 1987 Recurring sporting events disestablished in 1999