Chris Jones started his professional basketball career in the wilderness of the Mongolian League in 2015, but on Friday night, he lit up the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague with a performance long to be remembered by Valencia Basket fans after he single-handedly turned defeat into a 91-92 road win at Panathinaikos Athens.
The 29-year-old point guard from Garland, Texas took a road less travelled to stardom, and his accomplishment is all the more impressive in light of having been sidelined by a knee injury in December and early January.
After a season with Mongolia’s Tuv Ajmag, Jones moved on to Starwings Basel of Switzerland and then Mons-Hainaut of Belgium, before year-long spells with Bursaspor, Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv and finally LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne. Then, during the offseason in 2022, he joined Valencia.
It looked like the clash with Panathinaikos would generate nothing more than a solid performance from Jones, yet he found another gear from nowhere in the last few minutes of a strength-sapping game, scoring Valencia’s last 11 points.
Crucially, he hit the game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer when he sent Derrick Williams the wrong way with a pump fake, followed by a shot from behind the arc that hit nothing but net.