The first week of December will be remembered as one of the most exciting in Turkish Airlines EuroLeague history.
Drama, milestones filled December's first double-round week
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Have you ever wondered why people call the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague the most competitive basketball competition in the world?
The double round that launched a December full of consequential games serves as ample evidence.
Entering last week, 10 of the EuroLeague's 18 teams were separated in the standings by a single victory – all had either 6-5 or 5-6 records. Two more teams stood at 4-7, meaning that the 16th-place team had the potential to draw even with the fifth-place team by week's end.
Such was the already-dramatic backdrop when nine games on Tuesday and Wednesday delivered fans the closest round of scores in the EuroLeague's 23-season history. The average margin of victory in Round 12 was a EuroLeague-record 3.9 points, with six games decided by 4 or fewer points.
But the average difference only hints at how dramatic those nights played out.
Over barely 28 hours from the first Tuesday tipoff until the last of Wednesday's final buzzers, five of the nine games featured a shot to win or force overtime in the final second of regulation time.
Game-winners came in the final 7 seconds in Berlin, where ALBA overcame a 16-point deficit to defeat Zalgiris Kaunas as Jonas Mattisseck stole that victory from downtown, and in Vitoria-Gasteiz, where Baskonia rallied from 15 down to defeat Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul on Markus Howard's miraculous three-pointer.
Game-tying shots by Serge Ibaka of FC Bayern Munich on the fourth-quarter buzzer and Mike James of AS Monaco with 2 seconds left sent their games to overtime. Bayern would go on to defeat EA7 Emporio Armani Milan despite having trailed by 6 points with 45 seconds left in regulation. But James and Monaco would lose to Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade after four lead changes in overtime.
When the dust settled on Round 12, seven teams were tied with 6-6 records.
A rain of milestones
If Round 12 overflowed with drama, Round 13 continued delivering tradition in the form of EuroLeague icons making their imprint with new milestones and moves up in all-time rankings.
Already on Tuesday and Wednesday, Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens boss Ergin Ataman coached his 400th EuroLeague game, just the third person to do so, while Kyle Hines of Milan and Jan Vesely of FC Barcelona became the eighth and ninth players to haul in at least 1,000 defensive rebounds.
In Round 12, Milos Teodosic of Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade had jumped to sixth place on the all-time assists charts, and on Friday he moved up one more to fifth place, passing Sergio Llull of Real Madrid.
At the same time, James of Monaco made the biggest move of all, overtaking the great Juan Carlos Navarro by moving into third-place all-time in scoring – not to mention doing so in record time in terms of the fewest games needed to pour in his 4,171 points! James scored 25 of them on Friday as Monaco won in Kaunas against Zalgiris to help take the sting out of the overtime loss at Partizan three nights earlier.
Not to be outdone, Scottie Wilbekin of Fenerbahce surpassed the great Vassilis Spanouls with the 519th three-pointer made in his career.
And when the dust settled on Round 13, again 10 teams were within two victories of each other between fourth and 13th place in the standings, guaranteeing that the drama will continue, as always, in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, because as they say – and it's true again this winter – every game matters.