During the first two months of the new calendar year, no player in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague has been as hot as Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv star guard Scottie Wilbekin.
Who's Hot: Scottie Wilbekin, Maccabi
Stats
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Indeed, as the regular season enters its final stretch, no player has been as prolific during 2022 at putting the ball through the basket as Wilbekin. After having his ups and down during the first half of the regular season, Wilbekin has been nothing short of unstoppable ever since.
Wilbekin's on-going run of high-scoring games during January and February actually started with his final performance in December.
He finished 2021 in style, dropping 31 points on 5-for-9 three-point shooting in Round 18, then continued his hot streak into 2022. In his last seven games, Wilbekin has poured in 142 points for an average of 20.3, by far the best per-game mark in the league since Round 18.
Over that stretch of games, only one player – Mike James of AS Monaco – scored more points than Wilbekin, however, Maccabi's guard has played three fewer games.
Wilbekin has scored at least 20 points four times in last seven games and has not been below 13 points in any of them.
His 20.3 average is more than 6 points better than the 14.2 points that Wilbekin was scoring in the first 17 games of the season. In those first 17 games, he reached 20 points in just three games.
However, that is just one of the numbers Wilbekin drastically improved over the latest stretch of games.
Since Round 18, Wilbekin is making 61.0% of his two-point attempts, up from 43.6% before Round 18, and his sinking an impressive 52.3% of his triples, up from 35.0%. What makes his long-range accuracy even more impressive is that Wilbekin has done gotten better while making an average of 3.3 triples per game.
What's more, Wilbekin has not missed a free throw over the last seven games. He currently ranks first among all EuroLeague players in both triples made (2.7 per game) and in free-throw shooting (95.9%).
Wilbekin has also climbed up to ranking third in steals (1.7 spg.) thanks to averaging 1.9 since Round 18. All of that has Wilbekin averaging a PIR of 22.6 over the last seven games, second-best over that stretch, behind only Walter Tavares. That is also 9 PIR points better than Wilbekin's average in the first half of the regular season.
Wilbekin will look to continue his run on Tuesday, when Maccabi hosts Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz. His team that has going through a coaching change in recent weeks and needs its star player to maintain at the high level.