In his 248th game, Mike James of AS Monaco became the fourth, and fastest, 4,000-point scorer in Turkish Airlines EuroLeague history.
Mike James is fastest ever to reach 4,000-point barrier
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AS Monaco guard Mike James made Turkish Airlines EuroLeague history on Thursday night, becoming the fourth player in the competition to get 4,000 points.
With a triple off a screen late in the first quarter against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, James joined a select group of players led by all-time leading scorer Vassilis Spanoulis, who amassed 4,455 points in his career.
LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne guard Nando De Colo ranks second at 4,278 points and could go past Spanoulis later on this season. Juan Carlos Navarro finished his EuroLeague career with 4,152 points, all of them with FC Barcelona, and was the first player to ever reach 4,000 points.
James, however, is the fastest among them to 4,000 points, having reached the milestone in his 248th game. De Colo is second-fastest, in 258 games. Spanoulis hit the milestone in his 303rd game and Juan Carlos Navarro in his 319th.
James scored 467 points with his first EuroLeague team, Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, in 45 games. He went on to play for Panathinaikos Athens, getting 522 points in 37 games. In his only season with EA7 Emporio Armani Milan, James scored 595 points in 30 games. James had 1,122 points in 55 games with CSKA Moscow, and got 1,277 in 81 games with Monaco before Thursday.
James is one of only two players to score 600 points or more in two EuroLeague seasons: he did so with Monaco in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns with 622 and 605 points, respectively. Ex-Anadolu Efes Istanbul guard Vasilije Micic also broke the 600-point barrier in each of the last two seasons, getting 668 and 619 points. James reached 500 points in a EuroLeague season as many as five times: twice with Monaco, twice with CSKA and once with Milan. Only De Colo matches that achievement.
At 16.2 points on average coming into the game, James is also the fourth-best per-game scorer in competition history. The late Alphonso Ford leads that list (22.2 ppg.), followed by Kaspars Kambala (16.7 ppg.) and two-time EuroLeague MVP Anthony Parker (16.3 ppg.). None of these players, however, took part in more than 90 games, while James just played his 248th game in the competition.
Proving that he is much more than a scorer, James also ranked sixth all-time in fouls drawn (1,061), seventh in PIR (4,052) and ninth in assists (1,114), coming into Thursday's contest.