Euro(League) indeed

29/Mar/18 15:11

One competition, one award, 13 presentations, 12 winners and one common feature shared by all the EuroLeague MVPs of the season from 2006-07 onwards.

By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net

The first MVP was from the USA and succeeded himself; all the rest have been from Europe and succeeded each other.

Eurohoops remembers them one by one and awaits the next in line…

Scoring was his specialty, but not the only talent of which he had many and knew like few others how to reveal them on the court. In his third season in the competition, Anthony Parker also knew how to turn those talents into personal triumph. With career-high averages in points, steals and PIR, his selection as MVP coincided with the second of back-to-back trophies with Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Two is always better than one, and this goes for Parker as well. With the consistency that had always characterized his game plus career highs in rebounds and assists, his second MVP award came on the heels of the first. The fact that Parker remains not just the only player with back-to-back awards, but also the only non-European MVP, makes his place in the golden book of the competition even more special.

When his opponents figured something out, he was already onto the next thing. This was the element that made him special during his years on the court and for that season’s CSKA Moscow team. The career-best averages in points, rebounds, assists and PIR were more than enough to highlight Theodoros Papaloukas’s value and earn him the title of EuroLeague MVP as proof. In addition to being the first European to receive this honor, he became the first Euroleague Basketball Legend too, in 2013.

Calm when he had to be and passionate when the situation called for it, Ramunas Siskauskas was always resourceful as the MVP of the 2008-09 season. Like that season’s champion, CSKA, Siskauskas didn’t leave anything for anyone else that season, his first with the team, which was his best in terms of points. It didn’t take long for Siskauskas to enter the exclusive club of Euroleague Basketball Legends either, in 2014.

If there was a guide on how to get the ball in the basket, Juan Carlos Navarro would be one of the publishing consultants and his stats from 2009 would fill one of the book’s chapters. With career highs in assists and steals rounding off his third-most productive season in terms of points in his 17 years in the competition – all with FC Barcelona, the MVP award could only be his.

His assists were viral long before the term was even created, but Milos Teodosic was always more than that. In his third season in the competition and with Olympiacos Piraeus – but his first with a leading role, Teodosic proved he could score too. He was the EuroLeague Most Valuable Player of the season for 2009-10 and could be the Most Viral Passer for a lifetime.

He brought his own revolution to the role of point guard with everything he could do on both ends of the court. There were more than enough individual distinctions in his years on the court to assert the specialties that Dimitris Diamantidis possessed. In 2010-11 he earned the MVP of the season award by combining career-high averages in points, assists and PIR with his sixth EuroLeague Best Defender award for an unbeatable combination.

He was 30 years old in his first season in the competition. Naturally, Andrei Kirilenko had a lot of experience and an even greater ability to do everything for CSKA on both ends of the court. One look at his stats is enough to convince even the most skeptical fan. For his defensive talent, he was rewarded with the EuroLeague Best Defender award, and for all the rest with the MVP of the season trophy.

He who dares wins and Vassilis Spanoulis has certainly dared many times in his career and has won even more. In 2012-13 with Olympiacos, he dared to go against all those who thought that back-to-back trophy wins were a thing of the past. With his stats in points and assists reflecting his place on the competition’s all-time lists, he pulled it off as the MVP of the season too. What could be better?

The long beard has become Sergio Rodriguez’s trademark, but what always characterized him is his offensive talent. You want scoring? He can do it. You want assists? He can dish them, and then some. He also has an MVP award from the 2013-14 season. With career-high averages in points, steals and PIR, it was a well-deserved prize for the crafty point guard for Real Madrid then and CSKA now.

With five seasons in the EuroLeague and each one better than the last, Nemanja Bjelica’s second campaign with Fenerbahce Istanbul was his best of all. Bjelica learned to constantly evolve since he was young. In 2014-15, this evolution was reflected in his stats with career-highs in points, rebounds and PIR and, after helping Fenerbahce reach the Final Four, the MVP trophy found its next home.

Even though French is one of the most popular languages in the world, Nando De Colo prefers not to say much and instead lets his actions on the court do the talking for him. With career-high averages in points, rebounds, assists and PIR in 2015-16, he said it better than anyone else and the MVP award was only one among many awards for him that season. De Colo is the only player who has combined it with the Alphonso Ford Top Scorer Trophy in the same season. And if that wasn’t enough, he also won the EuroLeague with CSKA.

Being awarded last season’s MVP is one of the last pictures that EuroLeague fans have of him, because as talented as Sergio Llull is, he was just as unlucky last summer when he suffered a torn ACL. Since then, everyone has been counting backward with him, waiting for him to get back on the court to pick up where he left off: career-high averages in points, assists and PIR, and a Madrid team bereft of his madness.

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Tags Andrei Kirilenko anthony parker Dimitris Diamantidis Juan Carlos Navarro Milos Teodosic Nando De Colo Nemanja Bjelica Sergio Llull Sergio Rodriguez Theodoros Papaloukas Vassilis Spanoulis