Ever since mid-December, AS Monaco guard Mike James, a former Alphonso Ford Top Scorer trophy winner, has been filling up Turkish Airlines EuroLeague buckets more than any other player in the competition.
Who's Hot: Mike James, AS Monaco
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One of the best scorers of the past decade, James has overcome a slower-than-usual start to the regular season – which would not far from slow for anyone else – and turned back into the truly prolific scorer that basketball fans across the continent have gotten used to seeing.
James enters this week ranked fifth in scoring with 15.7 points per game and second with 5.9 assists per game. His high rankings are largely the result of his performances over the last two months of the season.
In the first 14 games of the season, James averaged 13.8 points and 4.6 assists and 1.6 steals. He struggled from long range, making 26.2% of his three-point attempts, and even missed 14 of his 55 free throws.
After Round 15, head coach Zvezdan Mitrovic left the Monaco bench and Sasa Obradovic arrived to replace him. Ever since then, James has been the best scorer in the competition.
In 11 appearances under Obradovic, James has been posting 18.2 points per game on 40.0% three-point shooting, having made 2 more three-point shots over that stretch of games than he hit in his first 14 appearances.
James has scored in double figures in all but one of those 11 games and has scored 18 or more points in seven of them. No player has scored more than his 200 total points since Round 15. He might have played more games than players behind him, but none of them averaged better than his 18.2 points, either.
Interestingly, James has been especially prolific away from home.
He dropped 20 points in a Round 15 road triumph against Zalgiris Kaunas, another 25 at ALBA Berlin, 26 points as Monaco beat FC Bayern Munich in German. Finally, to top it all off, he poured in 29 points to beat his former club Panathinaikos OPAP Athens at OAKA Altion arena.
In addition to filling up the basket and standing as the top scorer since Round 15, but James has also been one of the best ball distributors during that stretch, too.
He has dished a total of 82 assists, more than any other player since Round 15, and his average of 7.5 is second-best over that span. That includes his career-high 14 assists in that overtime win in Kaunas and 13 assists in a home victory against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv.
It has all led to James averaging a PIR of 20.2 over his last 11 appearances, up from the 14.0 he had before Round 15.
His performances have gotten Monaco back into the playoffs race and James will have two chances to add to this tally this week, starting on Tuesday night in a rescheduled Round 20 game against UNICS Kazan.