By John Askounis / info@eurohoops.net
Eurohoops singled out the five players who contributed a lot more than what fans expected them to this season in Europe’s top club competition. The common characteristic shared by all five of them is that their team made the playoffs, which get under way on Tuesday (17/4). Let’s take a look at the Top 5 most underrated players of this season’s EuroLeague that includes two experienced players and three rookies…
Anthony Gill (11 points, 4.6 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 12.1 PIR)
The 25-year-old American forward is in the second season of his professional career and his first in the EuroLeague. In Khimki, there is Alexey Shved and… the others, with Gill standing out considerably among Georgios Bartzokas’s… other players. He never showed a rookie’s nervousness and completed the regular season with 309 points and 129 rebounds in 710 minutes. It remains to be seen whether he will continue at the same pace in the games against CSKA Moscow.
Aaron White (9.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, 1 assist, 10.5 PIR)
Like Gill, White is a 25-year-old American forward and a rookie in the EuroLeague. He played in the EuroCup with Bonn and Zenit Saint Petersburg for the first two years of his professional career, but few expected that he would be just as effective with Zalgiris Kaunas in Europe’s top club competition. He played for 701 minutes during the regular season with 281 points, 135 rebounds and 31 assists.
Kostas Papanikolaou (8.2 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 11.5 PIR)
In the playoffs, the 25-year-old White will go up against Olympiacos and the 27-year-old Papanikolaou. The former NBAer is in his seventh season in the EuroLeague and, in fact, was a European champion with the Reds in 2012 and 2013. This season, though, has been one of his best in the competition. How many would have expected that he would be one of Ioannis Sfairopoulos’s six players with more than 200 points in the regular season, especially if they knew he would have played in only 25 of the 30 games?
Vincent Poirier (7.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 10.7 PIR)
Baskonia went through a lot to make the playoffs. The fans were expecting that Tornike Shengelia, Jayson Granger, Matt Janning, Rodrigue Beaubois and Marcelinho Huertas would be the key players for the Basques. Many also expected Johannes Voigtmann would be an important link in the chain, but fewer thought the same about the 24-year-old Poirier, the third rookie on our list. The French forward/center helped his team tremendously with 234 points and 157 rebounds during the regular season.
Cory Higgins (13.6 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 13.3 PIR)
28-year-old Higgins is definitely the most underrated of all. In 2016 he conquered the top of the EuroLeague, but last summer it was not certain that he would continue in CSKA Moscow. In the end, though, he secured a new contract and vindicated Dimitris Itoudis’s team. He was there for all 30 games of the regular season and boosted his offensive performance compared to his first two seasons in the EuroLeague. In 711 minutes of playing time, he scored 408 points, while he also tallied 63 rebounds, 55 assists and 29 steals.