In Italian professional basketball, the Serie A or Lega A Basket is the highest level club competition where play determines the national champion. A national basketball league was first organized for play in 1920.
Today, 16 teams compete in the highest level of play. Through the 2007-08 season, 18 teams competed; however, in September 2008, two clubs, Napoli and Orlandina, were forcibly relegated from the professional ranks for financial irregularities and were not replaced for the 2008-09 season. The first title was won by SEF Costanza Milano, and the team holding the record for title championships is Olimpia Milano, who have won 25 championships. In recent years, the league has been dominated by a handful of teams:
Benetton Treviso, with five scudetti (league titles) since 1992.
Virtus Bologna, with five scudetti between 1993 and 2001.
Virtus' crosstown rivalsFortitudo; although only with two scudetti, they had an 11-year run from 1996 to 2006 in which they appeared in the championship series 10 times.
Montepaschi Siena, with three scudetti since 2004, and the two-time defending champions.
Twenty teams have won the championship since its inception.
The season consists of a home-and-away schedule of 30 games, followed by an eight-team playoff round. Quarter-finals and semifinals series are best-of-five, final series is best-of-seven. The bottom two clubs are relegated, and replaced by the top team from the regular-season phase and the eight-team playoff round winner of the second-level LegADue.
Until the 2000s the Italian Championship was the most important national domestic league in Europe, but now the Spanish ACB League is considered to be stronger than Serie A. Nonetheless, the league is still considered to be one of the four premiere European pro national domestic basketball leagues along with the Spanish ACB, the Russian Super League, and the Greek A1 League.
