By Utkan Şahin & M. Bahadır Akgün / info@eurohoops.net
In the most general way, there are two types of basketball players:
A. The ones who prefer to create for their teammates.
B. The ones who are more interested in scoring than dishing the ball out.
Quality, however, is what matters, regardless of what you do on the court. It is about doing your best and giving everything you have on the court at the highest competitive level in European basketball. Both scoring points and making assists are key factors in basketball, which is all about simply putting the ball into the basket.
And creating those opportunities for teammates so they can do this even more easily have its own special value… Only certain players are gifted in creating. What if two players combined their powers in making assists and produced a different kind of beast?
Of course nothing like this could happen. We are living in the real world. Here at Eurohoops, though, we have been analyzing who makest the most assists and who makes how many points thanks to those assists, etc. So we came up with the idea of determining the most productive duos in the competition based on each other’s passes.
Distinguished readers, please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts! You are about to see the best players dishing for each other, which could be quite exciting…
10. Nick Calathes – Chris Singleton
Number of Calathes’s assists to Singleton: 18
Number of Singleton’s assists to Calathes: 3
Total number of assists between two: 21
Nick Calathes is the absolute leader of Panathinaikos Superfoods Athens and whenever he collaborates with Chris Singleton, the two take the full advantage of the occasion against desperate defences. So far in the EuroLeague, 92 points from Singleton’s total of 153 came from assists made for him, and Calathes is responsible for 48.9% of those.
Doesn’t this fact tell the whole story? As soon as Singleton gets the ball from his floor general, he executes! Panathinaikos sits in third place, with only five losses in 16 rounds of action, and this duo played a big part in this.
9. Thomas Heurtel – Adrien Moerman
Number of Heurtel’s assists to Moerman: 22
Number of Moerman’s assists to Heurtel: 0
Total number of assists between two: 22
Their stats show us something pretty amusing. We all know those stories in which one guy leads the way and a second guy just follows the track decided by the leader. Of course, in the real world, people are not superior to others in this sense. But we can see clearly that Adrien Moerman just likes to get dishes from his French friend.
The French connection rules in FC Barcelona Lassa’s games. We can see this duo creating for each other more and more as they have been drawing an ascending graph in recent games. It can be real fun watching French cooks play basketball!
8. Jayson Granger – Tornike Shengelia
Number of Granger’s assists to Shengelia: 17
Number of Shengelia’s assists to Granger: 5
Total number of assists between two: 22
Tornike Shengelia has been the most productive player and a true leader of Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz so far. The power-forward scores, makes assists, steals, blocks and… does it all! What about Jayson Granger? With each new round he proves what he’s capable of again and again, and he has averaged a career-high number in the assist charts.
It would be no surprise to see one of these guys in our rankings and here we have both. And it seems more than likely that we will keep watching them play the way they have so far.
7. Taylor Rochestie – Milko Bjelica
Number of Rochestie’s assists to Bjelica: 20
Number of Bjelica’s assists to Rochestie: 3
Total number of assists between two: 23
Taylor Rochestie sits in the director’s chair of Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade’s fairy tale. Well, if not exactly that, he’s definitely the Serbian side’s protagonist. Having seen Rochestie play so efficiently, you would expect him to make this list. He’s responsible for 34.5% of Zvezda’s total number of assists and points. In other words, more than one-third of their overall output.
Well, Milko Bjelica returning the favor to Rochestie makes them unstoppable on the offensive end.
6. Thomas Heurtel – Kevin Seraphin
Number of Heurtel’s assists to Seraphin: 22
Number of Seraphin’s assists to Heurtel: 2
Total number of assists between two: 24
Thomas Heurtel does not discriminate between his French big guys, not at all. He has assisted both of them in scoring 22 times. What makes the difference is the fact that Kevin Seraphin was more eager to return the favor and create for his teammate than Moerman was.
Could things turn around? Why not? Yet some things never change. You’re creating a list of the players with the most assists? You just have to put in Heurtel’s name from the very beginning since you know he’s bound to show up at some point. And sometimes even more than once…
3. Alexey Shved – Malcolm Thomas
Number of Shved’s assists to Thomas: 19
Number of Thomas’s assists to Shved: 7
Total number of assists between two: 26
At this point, we should reveal a shocking truth. Please double-check your seatbelts.
Alexey Shved is responsible for 41.9% of Khimki Moscow Region’s total points. Do you realize what this means? He, personally, makes up almost half of a team that has high goals. Who else would you trust if not him? The leading scorer of the EuroLeague loves to create for his friends as well.
And when they return some of Shved’s help, we come up with a fact like this: Malcolm Thomas has 28 assists in total and 7 of those are to Shved, which translates into 25%.
3. Sergio Rodriguez – Kyle Hines
Number of Rodriguez’s assists to Hines: 22
Number of Hines’s assists to Rodriguez: 4
Total number of assists between two: 26
Sergio Rodriguez is one of the most talented guards in the EuroLeague. Kyle Hines is one of the most talented centers in the EuroLeague. Now, please add these two together. Conclusion? We have an explosive duo!
The Russian powerhouse is more than lucky to have both these guys on their side. Rodriguez knows both how to create and execute. Guess what! So does Hines. It might be harder than anything else in the EuroLeague to protect your basket against this duo.
3. Kostas Sloukas – Jan Vesely
Number of Sloukas‘s assists to Vesely: 24
Number of Vesely’s assists to Sloukas: 2
Total number of assists between two: 26
These guys have the best possible title in front of their names: reigning champs. After their top-notch performance last season, Jan Vesely took a big step forward and unleashed the monster he always had inside him. As a pass-first guard, Kostas Sloukas likes playing the pick-and-roll and he has a great accomplice in Vesely!
Vesely rolls to the rim after the pick and all Sloukas has to do is throw the ball in the air for the center to catch and drop it into the basket. The numbers are doing the talking, not us…
2. Nick Calathes – James Gist
Number of Calathes’s assists to Gist: 24
Number of Gist’s assists to Calathes: 5
Total number of assists between two: 29
We don’t think you’re surprised by the fact that Calathes made this list twice. Calathes can establish great plays with the athletic rim runner and the fact is that James Gist is having the most productive season of his career.
Besides, Calathes is the player Gist dished out to the most. So, that’s been cleared up, we guess…