The Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season behind us saw two players – Vasilije Micic and Mike James – set milestones that no other players before them ever reached.
Star trio re-wrote record books in 2021-22
Entering the 2021-22 season, just three players in competition history had scored more than 600 points in a single season. Before it ended, however, that number was doubled.
Three more scorers topped that 600-point mark during last season, and none went higher than EuroLeague MVP Nikola Mirotic of FC Barcelona, who totaled 643 points, the third-highest total ever. He was followed by another All-EuroLeague First Team member, AS Monaco guard Mike James, who poured in 622 points, while Vasilije Micic of repeat champion Anadolu Efes Istanbul, who earned the Alphonso Ford Top Scorer Trophy thanks to the season's highest average, totaled 619 points.
Micic became the first player to score 600 points in two different seasons, not to mention having done so back-to-back. He reached 668 points in 40 games played during the 2020-21 campaign, while he appeared in 34 games last season, with a league-high average of 18.2 points.
In doing so, Micic made history by becoming the first player to surpass 1,200 points over a course of two consecutive seasons. The only player who came close before was James, when he totaled 1,185 points during 2018-19 and 2019-20 campaigns. Mirotic's total over the last two seasons, 1,157 points, place him third on the all-time list.
James made history of his own, too, as the first player to score more than 600 points and dish more than 200 assists in a single season.
Two players had more than 200 assists last season, James with 219 and Efes guard Shane Larkin with 206. Prior to that, there have been 10 other instances with players surpassing 200 assists in a single season, led by the record of 286 dished by Nick Calathes for Panathinaikos OPAP Athens in 2018-19.
Calathes has gone over 200 assists in four different seasons during his career, three times with Panathinaikos and once with Barcelona. Kevin Pangos is only other player to surpass 200 assists multiple times; he did so once with Zalgiris Kaunas and once with Zenit St. Petersburg. Other players who had more than 200 assists in a single season are Micic, Pierria Henry, Kostas Sloukas and Vassilis Spanoulis.
James, however, is the only player to reach the 200-assist plateau in the same season that he also joined another exclusive club, scoring more than 600 points.