After the end of
Second World War in
Yugoslavia in 1945, there arose a need for athletic development in the fledgling nation. Post-WW2
Yugoslavia was (with the exception of major cities such as
Belgrade,
Ljubljana,
Zagreb, and
Sarajevo) for the most part lacking in competitive opportunities in sports. In response to this, 1945 and 1946 saw an explosion of new clubs and leagues for every sport, the basketball league being part of this phenomenon. The very first competition under the newly formed Yugoslav Basketball League in 1945, drawing parallel to the
Yugoslav First League (of football), was more or less a nationwide affirmation of unity. Instead of individual clubs competing in the usual fashion, there were only eight teams. Six representing each state within Yugoslavia, one representing the province of
Vojvodina, and the last representing the
Yugoslav People's Army. Only in the 1970s did the basketball culture of
Yugoslavia truly come to enjoy recognition as the top nation in basketball. Breaking away from the dominance of the
Soviet Union, the Yugoslav league gave rise to stars that would go on to win multiple
Basketball World Championships and
European Basketball Championships. After a decade of dominance, the 1980s saw a disappointing slump of talent in the Yugoslav Basketball League. On 10 January 1985,
Drazen Petrovic, of
Cibona Zagreb scored 112 pts against SMELT Olimpija, a record in th league. Once again the world witnessed a sleeping giant come awake in the early 90s as
Yugoslavia won two straight
European Basketball Championships and a
World Basketball Championship. This momentum was swiftly halted by the
ethnic strife which broke out in 1991. Clubs from SR Slovenia and SR Croatia withdrew from the league so that the 1991–92 season, the competition's last, was contested without them. The country got divided into five successor republics, each founding their own basketball federations with the exception of
Serbia and Montenegro, which retained the name
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the
YUBA League. Despite all these changes, the joint league of clubs from the former Yugoslavia proved to be a winning league format formula, so on 3 July 2001, the
Adriatic League was founded. It features teams from all the former Yugoslav states, and it exists alongside scaled-down versions of the individual national domestic leagues of each of the former Yugoslav states. == Title holders ==