PAOK BC
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PAOK BC

PAOK BC (Greek: ΚΑΕ ΠΑΟΚ, Πανθεσσαλονίκειος Αθλητικός Όμιλος Κωνσταντινοπολιτών, Panthessaloníkios Athlitikós Ómilos Konstantinopolitón, "Pan-Thessalonikian Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans"), commonly known in European competitions as PAOK, is the professional basketball department of the major Greek multi-sports club A.C. PAOK, which was founded in 1926, and is based in Thessaloniki. The club's basketball section was founded in 1928. The club's home arena is the PAOK Sports Arena, which is an indoor arena with a seating capacity of 8,500 people.

Over the years, the PAOK basketball club has established itself with a firm reputation in Greek pro basketball, especially due to its successes in European-wide competitions. In the past, the club has won Greece's top-tier level Greek Basket League twice, in the years 1959 and 1992. The club has also won the top national Greek Cup competition three times, in the years 1984, 1995, and 1999.

In Pan-European competitions, PAOK has also won two European Cup titles. They won the now defunct European-wide secondary level competition, the FIBA Saporta Cup, in the 1990–91 season. They also won the now defunct European-wide third level competition, the FIBA Korać Cup, in the 1993–94 season. In addition, PAOK was the FIBA Saporta Cup Finals' runner-up in both the 1991–92 and 1995–96 seasons. On the European-wide top-tier level, PAOK competed in the EuroLeague's concluding championship tournament, the Final Four, at the 1993 Athens EuroLeague Final Four, where they finished in third place.

The men's basketball section of the multi-sports club PAOK AC was created in 1928, when Alekos Alexiadis, a young member of the administration council of PAOK AC (founded in 1926), took the initiative to create a men's basketball team. He "gave birth" to the basketball department again, after World War II. After the war, Alekos Alexiadis began to organize a basketball team from the children that played at the only basketball court in Thessaloniki. The first honor for PAOK's basketball section was the win of the 1958–59 Greek League championship. The team was crowned the Champions of Greece, with the following players; Dapontes, Kyriakou, Oikonomou, Paschalis, Stalios, Kokkos, Theoridis, Angelidis, Stergiou, Konstantinidis, and player-coach Irakleios Klagas. The next year, PAOK competed for the first time in a European-wide competition and was eliminated in the first round of the European Champions Cup by the Romanian champions CCA București. Three years later, the Greek League was reconstructed into a Nation-wide League, but PAOK was placed in the Second National Division, where they won an immediate league promotion to the first division the next year. The worst season of the club to date was in 1976–77, when PAOK avoided relegation, with a 66–53 play-out win over Dimokritos.

PAOK met Panathinaikos in its first Greek Cup Final, in 1982. The Athenians managed to scrape through to a two-point victory, despite the game being played in Alexandreio Melathron, which was PAOK's home arena at that time. In the following 1982–83 season, the team finished in second place behind Aris.

The success of both Aris and PAOK, fueled the ongoing rivalry between the clubs, that had long been established in football. In 1984, the two teams reached the Greek Cup Final. PAOK's head coach at that time, Faidon Matthaiou, in trying to boost his team's morale, ordered the players to completely shave their heads. PAOK won the Greek Cup by four points (74–70), in what is now remembered as the "final of the shaven heads".

The then 22-year-old Bane Prelević, debuted with the club in the 1988–89 season. He became the definitive leader of PAOK, and a fan favorite. He was often compared to the great Nikos Galis, who was at the time the captain of Aris. Prelević was often quoted for his loyalty to the team. He had a number of injuries and medical emergencies because of weak legs, but he would constantly choose to take heavy dosages of painkillers, rather than missing out on important games. During the 1980s decade, PAOK was second in the Greek League only to Aris.

PAOK won the now defunct European second-tier level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup's (Saporta Cup's) 1990–91 season championship, when PAOK defeated the Spanish ACB League club CAI Zaragoza in Geneva, by a score of 76–72, on March 26, 1991. On April 10, after the defeated Greek Cup final against Panionios in Piraeus, a car with PAOK supporters were violently attacked with an improvised molotov cocktail by unknown hooligans on Greek National Road 1. Two people burned alive and other two people were seriously injured, but they survived. The perpetrators were never found.

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