2020 FIBA Intercontinental Cup

Result

Games

Final context

The 29th edition retained the four-team Final Four format introduced the year before, this time hosted February 7-9, 2020 by Iberostar Tenerife at its home arena in San Cristobal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife. The bracket brought together Tenerife (Basketball Champions League champion), Segafredo Virtus Bologna of Italy (FIBA Europe Cup champion), Argentina's San Lorenzo de Almagro (Liga Sudamericana champion), and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers (NBA G League champion, again standing in for the NBA). Tenerife dispatched the Vipers comfortably in the first semifinal, 110-89, with forward Santi Yusta erupting for 31 points on 5-of-7 three-point shooting, while Gabriel Lundberg (18 points) and Giorgi Shermadini (15 points, 8 rebounds) also contributed; Rio Grande Valley's Jabari Brown briefly cut the deficit to a single point at 78-77 in the fourth quarter, but Tenerife closed the game out with a 40-21 fourth-quarter surge. In the other semifinal, Virtus Bologna defeated San Lorenzo 75-57, advancing despite missing injured star playmaker Milos Teodosic. San Lorenzo went on to beat Rio Grande Valley in the third-place game. The final, on February 9, pitted the two European champions against each other. Tenerife prevailed 80-72, led by team captain and Brazilian international point guard Marcelinho Huertas, who scored 23 points to go with 6 rebounds and 3 assists and was named tournament MVP. The win gave Tenerife its second Intercontinental Cup title in four years (after 2017), making the club, at that point, the tournament's first multiple-time champion of the post-2016 single-elimination/Final Four era, and it arrived on home soil in front of the club's own fans -- Tenerife having previously hosted and won the 2017 edition as well. Bologna, for its part, had also been the losing finalist in that season's Basketball Champions League, a competition Tenerife itself would go on to win before the year was out, giving the two clubs a busy, overlapping rivalry across multiple competitions that season. The 2020 Final Four proved to be the last edition of the Intercontinental Cup played before the COVID-19 pandemic upended global sport; the following year's edition, in February 2021, went ahead in a reduced single-game format played behind closed doors because of pandemic restrictions -- a scaling-back the tournament would not fully recover from until participation began expanding again from 2022 onward. As with 2019, the NBA G League champion again represented the Americas' developmental-league slot rather than an actual NBA franchise.

Sources

• Wikipedia — 2020 FIBA Intercontinental Cup
• FIBA — Iberostar Tenerife crowned FIBA Intercontinental Cup 2020 champions
• Eurosport Italia — La Virtus Bologna si arrende in finale: Tenerife vince 80-72