Mr October, Vassilis Spanoulis X3

By Lefteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net

Vassilis Spanoulis is the MVP for October as it was announced by the Euroleague. This is the third time that the captain of Olympiacos wins this award, all of them with the Reds. And he’s the third player next to Navarro and Tomic with three Euroleague MVP month awards

Against Neptunas Spanoulis broke his personal scoring record (with 34 points) and also became the fifth scorer in the Euroleague’s history with 2450 points, 6 more than Nikola Vujcic. Before that “Kill-Bill” scored 21 points vs Valencia and led Olympiacos to a big on road win. He started the season strong and kept his team perfect in the Euroleague.

This is the third MVP award that he wins after those on February of 2012 and November of 2012. In both cases he was part of Olympiacos’ team and at the end of the season he won the Euroleague title with the Reds. Juan Carlos Navvaro and Ante Tomic are the only other players who have also three MVP month awards.

Euroleague established this award in the start of 2004-05 season and the majority of the winners (17) come from USA. Eight MVP month awards have been won by Greeks (Spanoulis 3, Diamantidis 2, Papaloukas, Perperoglou, Papadopoulos), seven have been won by Spaniards and the same number by Serbians.

On the other hand, the players of CSKA dominate, as 11 MVP month winners played for them. Maccabi is next with 9 awards and then Olympiacos and Barcelona follow with 8 wins.