By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Alexey Shved became the first player in 18 years to finish a EuroBasket tournament with top scorer honors*, without coming from a season in the NBA.
The Khimki Moscow guard averaged 24.3 points per game (219 in total) shooting with 41% (61/146) from the field plus 87.3 (62/71) from the line while he also dished 5.9 assists per game.
While Russia didn’t manage to win a medal, finishing fourth after losing to Spain in the bronze medal game, Shved can take pride of breaking an impressive streak of NBA-ers always leading the scorers in the European Championships since 1999.
In that tourney, Real Madrid‘s Alberto Herreros led all in points, while Spain won the silver medal.
2001 was the year of Dirk Nowitzki (28.7 points) while Pau Gasol (25.8) topped all scorers in 2003. Dirk was once again the Alpha bucket-maker in 2005 with 26.1 in the 2005 tournament where he also won MVP honors by leading Germany to the silver medal, and also during the 2007 tourney (24 points avg.).
Nowitzki was succeeded by 2009 MVP Pau Gasol (18.7) who propelled Spain to the title. Tony Parker grabbed the torch in France’s silver medal run in 2011 and repeated his achievement in 2013 (19 points per game) when “Les Bleus” won the gold.
In 2015, the EuroBasket was dominated by the one-man show (25.6 points per game) of Pau Gasol which brought one more trophy for Spain.
*Goran Dragic is the only one who can top Shved but needs to score… 51 points + in the Final vs Serbia. While we expect a big game from the “Dragon”, 51 seems like a longshot.\
Photo: FIBA.basketball