MIES (Switzerland) - Season 11 of the Basketball Champions League, powered by Ameresco SUNEL is already nearly upon us.
With that in mind, we decided to look back on the last 10 whirlwind seasons of this competition and celebrate the players who have graced our courts and helped to make our first decade so entertaining.
You saw the Team of the Decade, but let's expand it a bit more than that.
Who are the best 50 players in this competition throughout the last 10 trips around the sun?
Now, obviously, this list and ranking are subjective, and of course, there will likely be some of your favorite players that didn't make the list or that you are sure should have been higher up the list, but allow us to explain our logic a bit and also remind you that this isn't an official awards list.
Team success
Individual awards
Longevity
Impact
The following 50 players were chosen and ranked based on the above criteria. We already covered numbers 50-41 here.
So, without further ado, let's jump into the next 10 names.
#40 Marcus Foster (Hapoel Holon, Turk Telekom, Rytas Vilnius)
Coming in at #40, we have one of the most ruthless scorers to ever play in the BCL. Marcus Foster started his BCL career with Hapoel Holon in Season 4, instantly averaging 17.8 points, 3.8 assists and 2.9 rebounds.
His next season for Turk Telekom only saw Foster play six games, but Season 7 brought him to Lithuania and Rytas Vilnius.
Foster put up 20.6 points, 3.9 assists, and 3.5 rebounds en route to becoming the top-scorer of the season and also claiming a spot in the BCL Star Lineup Second Team.
That season, Rytas also reached the Round of 16 and came agonizingly close to a spot in the Quarter-Finals. In terms of impact, it is hard to dispute that Foster's season started the momentum in Vilnius that eventually laid the foundations for the club to become capable of winning BCL Season X.
Foster then played two more games for Rytas the following season and currently sits on career averages of 17.5 points, 3.5 assists, and 3.0 rebounds in the BCL.
He also holds the record for the most 20-point games by one player. We sincerely hope that we see Marcus Foster come back to the BCL to continue his legacy in this competition, but if he has played his last BCL game, the American has surely left his mark as one of the most impactful scorers we have seen.
#39 David Holston (JDA Dijon)
When we say that making the BCL Top 50 players of all-time is about longevity and impact, David Holston is exactly the type of player we are talking about.
Holston played six seasons in the BCL for Dijon and was their most important player in every single one of those seasons. He never averaged fewer than 10 points or 5 assists in any of those seasons, with his best effort coming in Season 8, when he put up 14 points and 5 assists.
When we dig even deeper, we find Holston sits in the top 20 all-time for scoring with 910 points (11th), assists with 426 (3rd), steals with 118 (2nd), made three-pointers with 179 (3rd), and double-doubles with 6 (19th).
On the court, Holston understands angles, timing, rhythm, and tactics like few have on this continent.
Who knows, maybe one day we'll see him return as a coach, and if we do, look out, Europe, because all the ingredients are there for a truly great one.
#38 Howard Sant-Roos (ERA Nymburk, AEK BC, UCAM Murcia)
Cuban wingman Howard Sant-Roos is another player who ticks all the boxes when it comes to longevity. After making his BCL debut in Season 2 with ERA Nymburk, Sant-Roos has six seasons to his name with 67 games played.
His career has seen him start, like many of our very best players, in Czechia with Nymburk, before moving to AEK BC in Athens and then, finally, to Spain with UCAM Murcia.
Season 4 saw HSR have one of his best seasons and possibly one of the best all-round seasons ever by a player to not make one of the Star Lineup Teams at the end of the season. He averaged 18.8 efficiency thanks to putting up 12.9 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.1 assists.
Sant-Roos has been in the conversation for the BCL Defensive Player of the Year in every edition that he's participated, but 2024 saw him finally claim the award and also steer UCAM Murcia to the Final Four.
He is the BCL's all-time leader in steals with 125, and also sits 13th all-time for rebounds with 334.
#37 Michale Kyser (VEF Riga, Hapoel Holon, Surne Bilbao)
Michale Kyser came into the BCL with a bang. His career in this league started with one of the most memorable young teams ever at VEF Riga in 2021.
Kyser instantly stamped his mark on the BCL when he averaged 10.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.5 blocks, earning himself a spot in the BCL Star Lineup Second Team in the process.
The following season, Kyser moved to Hapoel Holon to team up with Joe Ragland to form a lethal 1-2 punch. He put up 9.3 points and 4.8 rebounds as Holon smashed their way to the Final Four.
Kyser is #2 all-time for blocks with 76, and he's not done yet. He is undoubtedly one of the highest-impact bigs ever in the BCL.
#36 Tamir Blatt (Hapoel Holon, Hapoel Jerusalem)
Tamir Blatt came into basketball with a name made famous by his father, David Blatt, and instantly went about building his own name outright.
Before playing a game in the BCL, Tamir had already been named in the All-Star 5 of the FIBA U20 EuroBasket in 2017. By the time he had won the BCL Best Young Player Award in 2019, everyone knew just how good he was.
After playing his debut BCL season with Holon, Blatt's first season running the point for Jerusalem saw him put up 10 points, 7 assists, and 2.6 rebounds.
After playing over 50 games in the BCL, Blatt now sits 9th all-time for assists with 306 and has gone on to become Israel's starting point guard with 28 senior appearances for his country.
His time in the BCL thus far has been as impactful on the league as it was on his own career.
#35 James Palmer Jr (Arged BM Stal Ostrow Wielkopolski, Galatasaray MCT Technic)
If we were to have a conversation about the best two-way BCL players that impact every phase of the game and every area of the court, James Palmer Jr would be in that conversation. And not just for Season X but for the entire 10-year history of this competition.
Palmer has career averages of 14.2 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 14.2 efficiency. He played 3 seasons in the BCL and led Galatasaray to the Final Four in Season 9, also earning Star Lineup honors in the process.
Palmer is a player who can legitimately guard all five positions on the court and is equally impactful on both ends of the floor in transition or the half-court.
There are players on this list who have won more individually and as a team, but Palmer's ability to dominate entire games on both ends has been the deciding factor in earning him a spot at #35 all-time.
#34 Sasu Salin (La Laguna Tenerife)
We really don't need to spend too long explaining to you why Sasu Salin is on this list.
He is the greatest shooter in the history of this competition with 207 made three-pointers, and throughout his 5 seasons in the BCL, he was a champion in 2022, finished 2nd in 2024, and 3rd in 2023. He is also a double champion of the FIBA Intercontinental Cup.
On the court, Salin is also much more than a shooter. He is one of Europe's most underrated defenders and most consistent offensive contributors.
In 13 seasons of playing for Finland, Salin has averaged 10 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 2 assists. His numbers in the BCL read 11 points, 2 rebounds, and 1.5 assists.
This is a player with 78 BCL games to his name and 111 appearances for his country. The Finnish sniper is the perfect prototype of professionalism and consistency.
#33 Kyle Wiltjer (Turk Telekom, La Laguna Tenerife)
Is Kyle Wiltjer one of the best offensive players ever in the BCL? Yes, of course he is one of the best offensive players in the history of the BCL.
There is a case to be made that whilst Marcelinho Huertas was unquestionably deserving of the Final Four MVP award in 2022, the fact that he had Wiltjer to throw the ball to and get a bucket whenever they needed one was the biggest difference between Tenerife having one or two BCL titles.
Wiltjer was already a member of the 2020 BCL Star Lineup Second Team in 2020 with Turk Telekom and averaged 14.8 points, 5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 14.5 efficiency in his 46 BCL games.
#32 Furkan Korkmaz (Banvit, Tofas Bursa)
Furkan Korkmaz's BCL career to date has been short, having only played 21 games in two seasons, but no one could argue he hasn't made an impact in those two seasons.
In fact, most of that impact was felt in his first season with Banvit. In his final season in Europe before being drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers in 2016, Korkmaz won the BCL Best Young Player Award, steering Banvit to the Final of the inaugural season of the BCL.
Tenerife may have won that Final, but a star was born for Turkish and European basketball.
Korkmaz had already won the U18 EuroBasket with Türkiye in 2014. He followed that with a silver medal in the FIBA U18 EuroBasket 2015 and a bronze in the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup 2015.
Korkmaz has gone on to play 328 career NBA games and win a silver medal for Türkiye in the FIBA Eurobasket 2025.
Now back in Europe, Korkmaz continued his BCL legacy by putting up 7.5 points in 11 games for Tofas Bursa in Season X. We sincerely hope he's not done there as well.
#31 Chris Johnson (Hapoel Holon, Hapoel Jerusalem)
Another player who can make a claim to be one of the most impactful, two-way players ever in the BCL. Johnson's career averages of 12.4 points, 5 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 14.2 efficiency points are emblematic of a player who has never met a box score he didn't like.
His exploits for Holon in Season 6 are really what make Johnson stand out.
He averaged 14.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 16.3 efficiency whilst steering Hapoel UNET Holon to the Final Four. And he did it whilst being required to defend every opponent's best player in every game. Those performances earned him a spot on the Star Lineup that season as well.
Johnson played 67 games in the BCL, and every single one of them was played at the same elite level on both ends of the floor.
The Basketball Champions League's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA or the Basketball Champions League.
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