By George Orfanakis/ info@eurohoops.net
The first phase of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague has been completed! A total of 15 rounds, 120 games and a little over 4.800 minutes of basketball in which the protagonists of the competition tried to do their best.
A few were disappointing, some provided important help and some others proved why they rightfully belong in the elite of European basketball. With the help of four specified criteria, Eurohoops came up with the first and second best teams in this year’s EuroLeague.
The criteria are the following:
- Individual performance: This is essentially the first and most basic criterion and concerns the player’s performance in the first half of the season. The rating in the evaluation system is representative to a large extent but is not the only statistic element that influenced the final selection.
- Contribution to the team’s game: There are some players who are the beginning and end of their team. Players that, if they are absent, their team is not as likely to celebrate at the end of a game or if they are sitting on the bench the whole team’s image is affected to a considerable extent.
- A team’s position in the standings: It’s not enough for a player to play extremely well, but at the same time he must be able to secure the win for his team. Of course, this doesn’t depend solely on one player but the team’s ranking affected the final selection to a large extent.
- Total games: In the first half of the season there were players who were especially unfortunate with injuries. Two characteristic examples are Bogdan Bogdanovic and Nando De Colo, who clearly have everything it takes to be in the best teams but who were left out because of their injuries.
There were dozens of candidates, which makes the competition for a spot on the top teams particularly intense and the options too many to choose from, when the distance between the first and second best line-ups is very small. Taking all of the above duly into consideration, Eurohoops presents its selections…
Nick Calathes – Panathinaikos Superfoods
The excellent season he’s been having so far in the EuroLeague rightfully places him in the second best team, while he also strongly “courted” a spot on the first one. He’s without a doubt one of the best defenders in the whole competition, something that is evidenced mainly by his ability to restrict rival guards but also the 1.9 steals (1st in the EuroLeague) he makes on average.
Starting this year, however, he has also taken on the role of executioner, as he’s Panathinaikos’s top scorer with 13.6 points per game. He is the brain of the greens while he’s on the floor, with the element that shines in his stats being the best assist-turnover ratio in the entire EuroLeague, with 96 assists for just 24 lost balls. He worthily covered the gap left for a long time by Mike James and the… rhetorical question that arises is this: What coach wouldn’t want to have a multi-tool like Calathes at their disposal?
Shane Larkin – Baskonia
This past summer Larkin left the magical world of the NBA with the aim of becoming the best point guard in the EuroLeague, as he himself put it. After the first 15 rounds, the ingenious guard confirms, to a degree, his words as he leads Baskonia and is one of the main reasons for the Basques’ excellent position in the standings.
He hasn’t missed any games, while special reference should be made to the fact that it took him very little time to adapt to the new reality of European basketball. He’s as good a scorer (13.6 points) as he is a creator (5.8 assists), and when he… puts his foot on the gas very few players can keep up with him, while he never neglects his defensive duties. He could not be absent from the top teams, and every indication is that the best for him is yet to come…