By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Eurohoops presents the Top 100 EuroLeague Players ahead of the 2021-22 season. It’s a list that was compiled with some specific criteria with the purpose of tracing and ranking those hoopers who are expected to define the upcoming EuroLeague season.
Editors from the international, Turkish, Greek and Spanish edition of Eurohoops selected the 100 players and ranked them after a certain procedure that included a lot of agreements and even more disagreements before a final consensus was reached. While there are some objective and factual elements/data that were taken into consideration when choosing the 100 players and then ranking them, the final result is, inevitably, subjective.
The list was compiled based on the rosters and moves as they were presented on the official EuroLeague website. Some cases, such as OJ Mayo, aren’t included as the list had been made before their official addition.
This year the primary criterion that determined the ranking was the momentum that a player may be carrying from the 2020-21 EuroLeague (or another European competition) as he’s heading into the new season. A decision was taken to focus on and reward a player’s individual performances, especially if his contribution lifted his team to certain EuroLeague heights.
In contrast, a player’s past achievements and overall legacy was taken in account far less than in our previous Top 100 features.
As always, there was a calculated risk with EuroLeague newcomers, especially those who are completely unfamiliar with European basketball. Hence why some players who will now take their first steps in EuroLeague have been omitted from the list or where placed in lower positions in comparison with “rookies” that already have a certain experience at a competitive level of European basketball. Experience in this level and type of game matters since we’ve seen no few quality players, even established NBAers, immensely struggle in their new surroundings simply because of their unfamiliarity with everything that European basketball encompasses.
A player of a team that is a title or Final Four contender automatically got a relative priority over another with possibly similar or equal, maybe even superior individual strengths. The higher the team’s projection for the upcoming season, the more boost a player got when it comes to his ranking and this is why you will find that there is an increased number of players from well-known powerhouses. Of course, there’s also the fact that these teams acquire top talent.
There are a few cases where a player’s overall value and proven capacity to deliver big, counterbalanced numbers and stats as well as age, that otherwise wouldn’t justify his position.
It should be noted that the place an “x player” gets on the list doesn’t necessarily mean that he is overall “better” than another player since there’s a multitude of factors – some that matter more than others – that determine the final ranking.
Year of birth: 1989
Position: Guard/Forward
Height: 1.93 m.
2020-21 stats: 8.7 points, 1.6 rebounds in 18:49 minutes over 39 EuroLeague games with Barcelona
Shooters gonna shoot: Kyle Kuric could pretty much put “money” in the place of his name on his jersey and no one would argue with that. He topped everyone else in last season’s EuroLeague in 3-point shooting with a superb 56.2 percent while he was making 3.2 3-pointers per game. He pumped up his game in the playoffs and finished the season with an 18-point performance in his first ever appearance in a EuroLeague Final. These are some of the reasons why he got a bit of an upgrade from his no. 56 position in last year’s ranking.
49. Trey Thompkins (Real Madrid)
Year of birth: 1990
Position: Forward
Height: 2.08 m.
2020-21 stats: 10.1 points, 4.1 rebounds in 21:17 minutes over 38 EuroLeague games with Real Madrid
Reliability: The quality or state of being reliable. 2 : the extent to which an experiment, test, or measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trials. Or, basically, Trey Thompkins. The American forward is entering his seventh season with Real Madrid and he remains a key part of Pablo Laso’s schemes and strategies due to his ability to produce quite efficiently and by making the most out of his offensive opportunities.
48. Sergio Llull (Real Madrid)
Year of birth: 1987
Position: Guard
Height: 1.90 m.
2020-21 stats: 8.7 points, 3.0 assists in 17:44 minutes over 26 EuroLeague games with Real Madrid
Bouncing back: Sergio Llull faced some injury issues last season and had to undergo an arthroscopy in February. The level of his game was clearly affected by these problems and wasn’t up to his standards, minus a rather memorable game in the playoffs. The new season started in an superb fashion with a show in the ACB SuperCup final and you can expect him to have more superstar nights like this through the season. What’s crucial for Llull is to combine those matches with more consistent performances, particularly when it comes to his shooting that was been really on and off these last couple of years.
47. Sertac Sanli (Barcelona)
Year of birth: 1991
Position: Center
Height: 2.12 m.
2020-21 stats: 7.8 points, 2.2 rebounds in 14:13 minutes over 34 EuroLeague games with Anadolu Efes
Seizing the opportunity: The more the 2020-21 season progressed, the more playing time Sertac Sanli got by Ergin Ataman. And it wasn’t a coincidence that the better he played, the more efficiently Efes began performing overall as well to claim third place in the standings. When the real tough (a.k.a. Final Four) got going, the Turkish big man delivered with 19 points and eight rebounds in the semifinal plus 12 points in the championship game for a win against exactly the team on which he has now landed.
46. Nikola Kalinic (Crvena Zvezda)
Year of birth: 1991
Position: Forward
Height: 2.02 m.
2020-21 stats: 10.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists in 26:39 minutes over 34 EuroLeague games with Valencia
Back home: Nikola Kalinic left Crvena Zvezda for Fenerbahce back in 2015 and now returns a completely different player. More mature (naturally), with a more polished and diverse game and coming off probably the top season of his career on an individual level. He’s going to be Red Star’s leader and the one who will champion the team’s efforts to make a complete turnaround after finishing the last season second-to-last in the standings.
45. Tyler Dorsey (Olympiacos Piraeus)
Year of birth: 1996
Position: Guard
Height: 1.96 m.
2020-21 stats: 11.2 points, 2.7 rebounds, 1.6 assists in 21:52 minutes over 34 EuroLeague games with Maccabi Tel Aviv
The ideal fit for Olympiacos: “Are we going to get a shooter or not?” was probably the most popular question among Olympiacos fans during the transfer season and before the team signed Tyler Dorsey. The Reds have been one of the most mediocre (if not worst) teams in EuroLeague when it comes to 3-point shooting over the last couple of years and Dorsey arrives to provide the cure for this and overall become one of the main hitmen in Oly’s offense.