By Antonis Stroggylakis/ astroggylakis@eurohoops.net
Fourteen rounds have been completed in the 2022-23 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season and the competition seems more thrilling than ever: There’s a three-way tie for first place and four teams with the same record at the tail end of the playoff zone as well as another quartet that shares positions 11 to 14.
Everything is up for grabs and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Likewise, the MVP race is also pretty intense. While several teams are bouncing back from lackluster starts, so too their star players are now entering the MVP conversation since their numbers are now translating into wins. This is why only two players from Eurohoops’ first edition of the 2022-23 EuroLeague MVP Ladder also appear in this list while there are three new, well-deserved entries.
Once again, numbers were just one of the factors that decided which players make the top five. There’s also efficiency to consider, how much of an overall impact a player has and how many games his team has won.
1. Sasha Vezenkov – Olympiacos Piraeus
Season Stats: 19.6 points (2nd overall), 7.3 rebounds (3rd overall), 2.1 assists, 25.9 PIR (1st overall) in 29:45 minutes
Team Record: 9-5 (tied for 2nd)
Previous Spot on the MVP Ladder: 1st
During the first half of the recent game between ASVEL Villeurbanne and Olympiacos and while Sasha Vezenkov had 11 points in 11 minutes, Mike James wondered out loud on Twitter |why is Vezenkov always open” and why his opponents “don’t scout” to “try to limit” his “elite” off-ball movement.
By describing the quality of Vezenkov’s motion off the ball as such, James himself gave an answer to his questions. It’s one thing to want and plan to stop Vezenkov’s shenanigans and another to actually neutralize him and prevent him from playing the way he wants and finding his sweet spots. When the forward isn’t accurately bombarding from long or mid-range, he cuts to the basket very fast for a player of his size (2.06 meters) with devastating results. What’s more impressive than the way he’s maneuvering is the quickness with which he sees every single gap on the defense and punishes all mistakes, how well he anticipates and reads the actions and reactions of both his opponents and his teammates in order to be at the right place at the right time and create a situation in which he scores with ease, mostly. It doesn’t start easy, he just makes it look easy in the end and the other side doesn’t know what hit them.
Then, of course, there’s Vezenkov’s shooting technique and ever-rising confidence that allows him to release the ball above the opponent, often with no regard for distance or who’s in front of him.
Teams often find it difficult to double-team Vezenkov since he’s mastered catch-and-execute situations, wasting no time to finish the play in the blink of an eye. Even if they do send help defense on him, on one hand, he can finish through heavy contact, and, on the other, he has both the mind and the aptitude for passing the ball as is also visible in his increasing number of assists.
Vezenkov had a career night at FC Bayern Munich with 20 points, 13 rebounds and 43 PIR in Round 8 and won EuroLeague’s November MVP after a decisive performance of 24 points plus 6 rebounds in a victory over ALBA Berlin in Round 10. His hand remained hot to light the Olympiacos fire in the blowout wins over Virtus Segafredo Bologna and Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul with an average of 20.0 points and 16-21 shots combined earlier this month.
Olympiacos went 4-3 during this period with, perhaps, the most disappointing loss arriving at ASVEL where the team blew a 21-point lead. Vezenkov had 16 points on 7-of-8 shooting, but attempted only 2 shots in the last 13 minutes. If he was more aggressive or the Reds played more through him in the second half, maybe the result would’ve been different.
A synonym for efficiency, the very prolific Vezenkov now displays a spectacular 73.0% on True Shooting which is the best among the EuroLeague’s 20 highest-scoring players. He’s also the only player in double figures with more than 70% shooting (70.8%) on two-pointers. His 45.9% on a hefty 5.2 three-point attempts per game is the icing on the cake.
2. Will Clyburn – Anadolu Efes Istanbul
Season Stats: 19.1 points (3rd overall), 5.9 rebounds (tied for 7th overall), 2.4 assists, 19.5 PIR (6th overall) in 34:27 minutes
Team Record: 7-7 (tied for 3rd)
Previous Spot on the MVP Ladder: –
Since the completion of Round 7 and the previous edition of the MVP Ladder, no player combined such steady and prolific production rates in scoring with pretty solid percentages and five victories for his team other than Will Clyburn. Speaking of unique feats, no player has scored 20+ points in six straight games this season other than… drum roll… Will Clyburn.
During the 5-0 winning streak, thanks to which Anadolu Efes bounced back from a 2-5 start, Clyburn averaged 22.0 points, along with 6.0 rebounds and 2.8 assists. Throughout that run, he was lethal from the perimeter with 18-of-33 three-point shooting and a key reason why Efes remains one of the top shooting teams from deep in the competition.
It was one of his rampages from downtown and his 11 points in the fourth quarter that helped Efes overcome Olympiacos at home after trailing for almost three quarters. In the narrow road win over Virtus, Clyburn hit a decisive dagger from beyond the arc in the last minute while leading Efes in scoring again with 21.
Clyburn is a swiss-knife type of a player and Efes gains so much from him apart from buckets. Yet in the absence of Shane Larkin, it’s his scoring that’s become immensely important for his team. The less dangerous he is, the smaller the winning chances are for Efes, as it also became obvious by the losses to Cazoo Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz and Partizan Belgrade. The 2019 Final Four MVP had two of his weakest outputs this season in those games and finished with 2-of-14 shooting in Serbia.
But hey, there are extremely few players without a single bad night and one of them, again, occupies the first place on the MVP Ladder.
3. Mike James – AS Monaco
Season Stats: 17.8 points (6th overall), 4.4 assists (tied for 13th overall), 3.6 rebounds, 19.6 PIR (4th overall) in 31:37 minutes
Team Record: 10-4 (tied for 1st)
Previous Spot on the MVP Ladder: 2nd
In comparison with his numbers in Vol. 1 of the MVP Ladder, Mike James’s scoring and shooting percentages saw a drop during the last seven EuroLeague games, but he pumped up the rate of his assists (from 3.9 to 5.0 in these seven matches) while further limiting his turnovers (1.9 then, 1.5 through this period). He overall remains the top contributor for an AS Monaco team that has now climbed a share of first place in the standings (in a three-way tie with Fenerbahce Beko and FC Barcelona).
James had his usual defining MVP (and viral) moment at Real Madrid when he made an enormous four-point play by hitting the three-pointer in the face of reigning two-time EuroLeague Best Defender Edy Tavares and while drawing a foul from the big man to force overtime before his team’s victory. It was his highest-scoring performance during this seven-game stretch with 24 points.
Jordan Loyd’s nose injury that took place in that game added some extra burden on James’s back. It also made defensive adjustments easier for opposing teams (like Barcelona and ALBA Berlin in the last two matches) that are now aiming to squeeze him like never before.
Still, James is finding ways to influence Monaco’s offensive game more than anyone, even if he’s not the bucket-making machine he was when the season started. In his sole game in single digits this season vs. ALBA, he dished out a season-high-tying 7 assists and grabbed a season-best 7 rebounds.
While being Monaco’s primary decision-maker, ball handler and overall No. 1 target for the opposing defense, James remains one of the least prone to turnovers players in the EuroLeague with an average of 1.7 for a very low number of 7.4 per 100 possessions.