Baloncesto Málaga


Baloncesto Málaga, S.A.D., for sponsorship reasons named Unicaja, is a Spanish professional basketball team that is based in Málaga, Spain. The team plays in the Liga ACB and the EuroCup. The team is sponsored by the Spanish bank Unicaja.

History

Unicaja was originally founded in 1977, as CB Caja de Ronda. In 1992, the club merged another ACB team in the city of Málaga, CB Maristas de Málaga, which was originally founded in 1953 as Ademar Basket Club. Over the years, the club has featured players like: Nacho Rodríguez, Berni Rodríguez, Carlos Cabezas, Jorge Garbajosa, Marcus Brown, Sergei Babkov, Michael Ansley, Louis Bullock, and Kenny Miller, as well as numerous other well-known players. The club won its first title, when it won the European-wide third tier level FIBA Korać Cup in the 2000–01 season. They then won the Spanish King's Cup title in 2005. The next year, in the 2005–06 season, Unicaja won its first-ever Spanish League championship.
The club finished its best years to date, by qualifying for the 2007 Euroleague Final Four, where it was defeated in the semifinals by CSKA Moscow, and thus finished in third place in the EuroLeague. In October 2007, Unicaja faced the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies in a friendly match, and they defeated the Grizzlies, by a score of 102–99. That was one of the 17 times that an NBA team has lost to a foreign club. Pau Gasol and Juan Carlos Navarro, two of the greatest Spanish basketball players of all time, played for Memphis in that historical game.
Málaga participated in the European-wide top-tier level league, the EuroLeague, for 15 consecutive seasons. However, in the summer of 2015, it lost its EuroLeague A-licence. Therefore, in the 2016–17 season, Unicaja participated in the second tier level EuroCup. The club immediately won the EuroCup title, in its first season in the league, after winning over Valencia Basket in the league's Finals.

Logos

Home arenas

Since 1999, Unicaja Málaga has played its home games at the Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena arena. The arena originally seated 9,743 spectators for basketball games, and was expanded in the year 2010, to a current seating capacity of 11,300 people for basketball games.

Players

Retired numbers

Current roster

Depth chart

Notable players

CB Caja de Ronda

CB Maristas

Unicaja

Honours and awards

Honours

National:
International:
Other competitions:
ACB Finals MVP
Spanish Cup MVP
ACB Slam Dunk Champion
ACB Three Point Shootout Champion
All-EuroLeague Second Team
All-ACB First Team
All-ACB Second Team
EuroCup Finals MVP
Baloncesto Málaga B is the reserve team of Unicaja, basketball based in Málaga.
From 2007 to 2016, Baloncesto Málaga had an agreement with CB Axarquía, for them to play as the club's main farm team, while Baloncesto Málaga B, which currently plays also under the name Unicaja, was the club's third team until the end of this contract.

Women's team

On 14 July 2017, the club announced the creation of a women's team.
Just in its second season, Unicaja promoted to Liga Femenina 2.

Season by season