Two All-EuroLeague guards, Mike James and Lorenzo Brown, go against each other once again in Monaco on Thursday night.
Head-to-head: Mike James vs. Lorenzo Brown
One of the most exciting head-to-head matchups of Round 5 will take place at Salle Gaston Medecin in Monaco, pitting two superstar guards opposite one another, AS Monaco's Mike James and Lorenzo Brown of Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv.
The two players both earned All-EuroLeague honors last season – Brown as a first-team selection while James made the second team - and were the main protagonists of a thrilling five-game EuroLeague Playoffs series in which Monaco ousted Maccabi to reach its first-ever Final Four.
During that series, both players performed at a high level. James might have struggled, shooting just 21.6% from three-point range, but that did not prevent him from having all-round performances, one after another. He averaged 16.2 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the series, including posting 21 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in the decisive Game 5.
Brown kept up, averaging 15.4 points, despite making just 42.1% of his two-point shots during the series, and also had 4.2 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 1.4 steals in those five games.
Now James and Brown will go at it once again in this early-season re-match, which will mark the 13th time they go head-to-head since Brown entered the league in the 2019-20 season.
They first faced each other in February 2020 when James was with CSKA Moscow and Brown with Crvena Zvezda Belgrade. James shined with 29 points in the Serbian capital, while Brown scored 10 in an 81-86 defeat.
In the 2020-21 campaign, James's CSKA and Brown's Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul split regular-season road wins, while in the 2021-22 season, James and Monaco swept Brown's UNICS Kazan. The two also played a pair ofregular-season games last season, and despite how prolific they are as scorers, it is interesting to note that each scored more than 15 points just once in those six regular-season games.
Brown had 16 points and 8 assists in Fenerbahce's overtime home loss against CSKA in October 2020, while James had 25 points and 7 assists in Monaco's thrilling 79-76 win over UNICS in February 2022.
Overall, James has outperformed Brown in their head-to-head games. Not only has he won eight of those games, but he also averaged 16.8 points compared to Brown's 12.5. While the two players were dead even in the assists they delivered, each with 4.3 per game, James also had an edge in rebounding, with 4.6, quite remarkable for a guard, with Brown pulling down 3.0 per game.
Brown has picked up 1.3 steals per game in those 12 contests and shot the ball better from the distance, making 20-of-60 triples (33.3%), compared to 19-for-90 (21.2%) that James shot from long range. However, James has a significantly better average PIR of 14.5, compared to Brown's 8.5 per game.
Some of those numbers will likely need to swing in Brown's favor for Maccabi to have a shot at beating Monaco on the road on Thursday night.