With EuroBasket 2025 tipping off, this is your one-stop destination for in-depth previews of all 24 national teams heading into Europe’s premier basketball tournament. Whether you’re tracking MVP candidates, X’s-and-O’s brilliance, or just figuring out who might crash the medal party, our Power Rankings and team-by-team breakdowns will keep you ahead of the curve.
Slovenia: Luka’s Team — All-In Again
Group D – EuroBasket 2025 Preview
Slovenia enters EuroBasket 2025 with familiar hopes — and familiar risks. The roster is aging, the supporting cast is flawed, but when you have Luka Dončić at the controls, anything is possible. After a disappointing 2023 World Cup and another rocky qualifying stretch, this might be the last big run with this core. And Luka seems ready to carry the weight once again.
Best Players: Luka Dončić remains the focal point — and possibly the best player in the entire tournament. Klemen Prepelic (26 PPG in qualifiers) is their top perimeter shot-creator outside of Luka, while Gregor Hrovat does a bit of everything as a two-way glue guy.
Path: Slovenia finished the qualifiers 4–2, dropping both of their road games (to Portugal and Israel). Not a disaster, but not the sign of a top-tier squad either. They often struggled without Luka, and the team’s dependency on him was hard to miss.
Strengths: Luka Dončić. That’s it. He can single-handedly dominate a game.
Low Turnovers. They protect the ball well and rarely give opponents easy points.
Pace Control. Luka slows the game to a tempo he can manipulate — useful against faster, deeper teams. Scrappiness. They get physical on defense and force teams into uncomfortable shots. Continuity. The core group has played together for years, and that chemistry still matters in international play.
Weaknesses: Slovenia’s biggest issue is floor spacing — only Prepelic shot reliably during qualifiers, and most of his looks came off the dribble. The aging core doesn’t help; many key pieces are past their peak, and the younger players bring defense but not much creation or shooting. The Luka dependency is real — when he sits, the offense stalls. Defensive lapses are another concern, especially beyond the guard positions where lateral quickness and rotations falter. No reinforcement is expected from Vlatko Čančar, who opted to focus on his EuroLeague prep — a significant loss on the wing. And with no athletic rim-runner in the frontcourt, their offense becomes more static and reliant on halfcourt brilliance.
Bottom Line: This team will go as far as Luka can drag them. Without a vertical threat like Nebo, Slovenia becomes easier to guard in the paint and lacks the physical interior presence needed to deter elite slashers. The defense holds up in stretches, but without a true eraser at the rim, they’ll need to outsmart — not outmuscle — better teams. If Luka goes nuclear, this team can absolutely threaten anyone in a single-elimination game.
Expectation: Dangerous because of Luka, flawed everywhere else
If the roster around him steps up just a little, we might be watching another deep run. If not? It’ll be Luka vs the world.
This article was co-written by the hosts of the European Hoops podcast, Tiago Cordeiro and André Lemos. Subscribe to the podcast and follow European Hoops on Twitter: @EthosEuroleague.
