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Battle of the Decades: Marcus Brown vs. Mike James

22/Nov/22 11:45

Marcus Brown and Mike James, Mike James and Marcus Brown. Eurohoops put them together for a special “Battle of the Decades”.

By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net

One competition, two players, many commonalities and two different decades. And a matchup taken from the craziest basketball dreams.

Marcus Brown left his mark in the EuroLeague from 2000 until 2011 before Mike James took over in 2014. So, how do they compare?

It’s time to measure them, using not only the eye test but also the numbers for what we like to call the Battle of the Decades.

MARCUS BROWN
Guard | 1.91 meters | April 3, 1974 | USA

Marcus Brown was already 26 years old when he first played in the EuroLeague. He brought experience from stints in the NBA (Portland Trail Blazers 1996-97 and Detroit Pistons 1999) and France (Pau-Orthez 1998, Limoges 1999-2000), before heading to Italy and joining Benetton Treviso. It was the first of six teams he played for during his EuroLeague career.

Notably, he won at least one trophy in all six countries where he played in Europe. Here are his EuroLeague clubs:

He scored 14 points on 3 of 6 shooting in his EuroLeague debut on December 7, 2000, in a 78-74 road loss at Olimpia Ljubljana and that was only a glimpse of what was to come.

Brown’s first year in the EuroLeague was also the most productive in his career with a 20.3-point average in 10 games (the league’s top scorer was the late Alphonso Ford with 26 ppg in 12 games) before Benetton was eliminated in the quarterfinals. He waited until 2004 for his first Final Four, in Tel Aviv, where he was the top scorer with an average of 25 points. However, CSKA Moscow lost to Maccabi in the semifinal and finished third. He returned twice more times to the final stage, the next year in Moscow and 2007 in Athens, but Brown never played in the championship game.

When his career was over, Brown’s EuroLeague resume included an All-EuroLeague First Team appearance in 2004 and All-EuroLeague Second Team appearances in 2003 and 2005. He retired as the EuroLeague’s top scorer.

Brown finished with 2,739 points in 179 games (15.3 ppg.), which is currently 17th-best all-time. He was also ninth in assists (458) when he retired and he is still among the career top 50. Incidentally, Brown also starred in our first-ever battle of the decades seven years ago, however, while Andrew Goudelock at the time was a fair comparison, James is even closer to him as a player.

MIKE JAMES
Guard | 1.85 meters | August 18, 1990 | USA

Many may not remember it or know it at all, but while Baskonia was Mike James’s first team in the Euroleague in 2014, it was not the first, nor the second, nor the third, not even the fourth European team in his career. He played for Zagreb in 2012, Hapoel Galil Elyon (second division of Israel) in 2013, Omegna (third division in Italy) in 2013-14 and Colossus of Rhodes in 2014 before leaving mid-season for Vitoria-Gasteiz.

James was at the team the leading scorer in the Greek League with a 21 points average in eight games before he left the “Island of the Knights” for Baskonia. The rest is already history.

His EuroLeague debut was pretty modest for James, who scored 8 points (3-of-6 shooting) in Baskonia’s 93-89 win home win over Valencia Basket on December 12, 2014. His rise across the board has been gradual since then and his consistency is impressive, to say the least.

James was one of the key players (10 points, 2.6 points, 2.7 assists) in Baskonia’s frantic run which ended in fourth place in the 2016 Final Four in Berlin and since then he has been trying to return to the final phase to finish the job. Almost every other attempt ended in the playoffs, while he was still absent from the CSKA Moscow team that finished fourth in 2021 in Cologne after briefly returning to the NBA (With the Brooklyn Nets).

Individual distinctions are just a natural consequence of his game. James won the Alphonso Ford EuroLeague Top Scorer Trophy in 2019 with 19.8 points scored over 30 games and was a member of the All-EuroLeague Second Team the same year and the All-EuroLeague First Team last season.

He is up to seventh on the all-time scoring charts with 3,468 points and ranks 11th in assists with 951 and counting.

Tags Euroleague Mike JAmes Monaco Žalgiris
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