Monaco's star guard scored 10 of his 24 points in the final 3 minutes to lift Monaco to victory.
Mike James came through in the clutch against Olympiacos

Mike James came through in the clutch for AS Monaco and the star’s heroic performance late gave his team a hard-fought 85-77 victory over Olympiacos Piraeus as well as some revenge from last season’s Final Four loss.
James scored 10 of his 24 points in the final 3 minutes to spark a 12-4 close to the game as Monaco improved to 7-4.
“I was just trying not to force things and stay patient. They were keying in on me so I didn’t want to get into bad situations where I had to take tough shots. I was trying to wait and take shots I thought I could make where I was kind of open,” said James, who also dished out 6 assists.
James scored to make it 73-71 and then buried a three-pointer, split free throws, assisted on Donta Hall’s big dunk, converted 2 more foul shots and finished the scoring with 2 of 3 free throws to lock up the win.
“At the end of the game I was just trying to stay aggressive and it worked out,” said James, who topped 20 points for the fifth time this season.
Monaco as a team exorcised a bit of the demons of losing to Olympiacos 76-62 in the Final Four after leading by 12 points at halftime. Monaco also earned an important win in the fight for the playoffs as Olympiacos entered the game with an identical 6-4 record.
“Everything in EuroLeague is important. Especially after how we started. We had some ups and downs and had a bad week against [Anadolu] Efes and Madrid. Just trying to find a level of consistency and staying at that,” said James, referring to two straight wins since losing at home to Efes and at Real in the two-round week earlier this month.
James also made some history in the game as he registered a performance index rating of 28 to move to 4,188 points all-time, passing Vassilis Spanoulis’s PIR of 4,183 and into fourth place all-time in EuroLeague history.
James’s 2 steals also moved him into a tie for 13th place with James Gist on 252 steals.