By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Anadolu Efes star guard Vasilije Micic was named to the 2021 All-EuroLeague First Team. This is the first All-EuroLeague First Team appearance for the Serbian player who was previously a member of the Second Team in 2019.
Micic joins Bayern Munich forward and Serbian national team teammate Vladimir Lucic in the 2021 Top Five squad.
Per EuroLeague Basketball:
As a result of voting that included fans, media and, for the first time, head coaches and team captains, Vasilije Micic of Final Four-bound Anadolu Efes Istanbul has been honored with a place on the 2020-21 All-EuroLeague First Team.
In the finest of his seven Turkish Airlines EuroLeague seasons to date, Micic established career highs in scoring (16.3 ppg.) and performance index rating (17.0). The 27-year-old guard made a team-high 34 starts for Efes and ranked sixth in the league with 29:42 minutes played per game. He also finished fourth in scoring, ninth in assists (4.8 apg.) and 10th in PIR. Micic was one of just three players in the top 10 in both scoring and assists.
Micic’s three MVP of the Week honors this season were the most in the competition. He captured the first after netting 26 points in a road win at FC Barcelona. He earned the second with 37 points – tied for the second-most points scored by any player this season – in a Round 26 triumph over crosstown rival Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul. And his third weekly MVP honor came as Micic put up 21 points and 7 assists in a Round 31 victory against Panathinaikos OPAP Athens.
Micic remained dominant in Efes‘s playoff series against Real Madrid, during which he averaged 17.2 points on 53.1% three-point shooting plus 4.0 assists and 1.2 steals over five games. Micic’s production was tied directly to Efes’s success all season; the team was 8-1 when he scored more than 20 points and 9-1 when he delivered more than 5 assists.
This is Micic’s second such honor after he was a 2018-19 All-EuroLeague Second Team selection. Micic made his EuroLeague debut at age 20 in 2014 for FC Bayern Munich but played just six games that season due to injury. Midway through the 2015-16 season, he transferred from Bayern to Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade in his native Serbia, and the season after that landed in Lithuania with Zalgiris Kaunas, with whom he made his first Final Four appearance while helping the club return to the event for the first time since 1999. Since the summer of 2018, Micic has called Istanbul home, becoming a EuroLeague finalist in his first season at Efes. They return at the next opportunity to fight for the title at the Final Four in Cologne, Germany starting on Friday, May 28.