Sportradar's Matt Kamalsky breaks down how Monaco and Hapoel lead a season defined by two-way dominance and efficiency trends
Stats review: Hapoel, Monaco, and the battle for efficiency
Statistiques
4 Minute de lecture
With just over two months of the 2025-26 EuroLeague Regular Season in the books, several trends have taken hold to shape the EuroLeague landscape. Some of them are obvious — like the parity among playoff contenders reflected by the nine teams with either 8 or 9 wins through Round 13, but some are a bit more subtle.
The graph above plots every team in the EuroLeague in terms of how far above or below average they have performed in offensive and defensive efficiency. Before diving into the specifics, there are several intriguing qualities of the shape of this graph, given the state of the league. As of today, league-wide offensive efficiency sits only a couple of dozen bounces short of last season’s record-breaking pace, but with 11 teams scoring over 1.00 points per possession — the long-standing gold standard for offensive success at this level — the quality of offensive play this season remains exceptionally high. While nearly a dozen teams are hovering right around the average for offensive efficiency this season clustered in the middle of this graph, that does not really do their performances justice.
It also puts the play of Hapoel IBI Tel Aviv in perspective. In a season where numerous teams are scoring at a high level, Hapoel has put some distance between itself on the field, putting up numbers on par with those of the Anadolu Efes Istanbul teams that were so dynamic in the years around the pandemic. As one of the five teams that has not just been better than average offensively, but defensively as well, Hapoel has gotten the job on both ends en route to a 10-win start that has it in sole possession of first place.
Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of this graph concerns the next eight teams behind Hapoel, as the top-nine teams in the standings are all among the 10 teams that have performed at an above-average level defensively this season. While this is a testament to their effort level and execution on that end, it is also indicative of how hard it is to gain a competitive advantage on the offensive end at this point in the league’s evolution. Virtus Bologna has been the exception to that rule, looking like a different team offensively at Virtus Arena than it has during its 1-7 start on the road.
The importance of defense this season aligns with the fact that AS Monaco has achieved the league’s best efficiency differential, edging Hapoel, as it has not only relished a bounce-back season from Mike James and shot a tremendous percentage around the rim, but solidified itself as a top-three defense as well. Monaco has had several big-time defensive efforts in a season where those types of nights have been hard to come by.
Olympiacos Piraeus, Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens, and Zalgiris Kaunas are the three other teams that have done above-average work on both ends, earning the next three best efficiency differentials as a result. Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade has been nearly just as effective on a per-possession basis and shares a similar prognosis looking forward with the reigning champions, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul: the identity they have built defensively gives them significant upside if they can fall into a better rhythm offensively in the coming months.
With two-thirds of the season to go, it will be interesting to see how these teams and trends hold up to the pressure cooker that is the modern EuroLeague.