The best player of the season in the Euroleague is Barça player Nikola Mirotic. The Barça power forward has been named MVP of the competition this Wednesday in Belgrade in the framework of the previous acts of the final four of the tournament, which starts this Thursday with the semi-finals.
Mirotic has averaged 16.6 points and 5.1 rebounds this season in continental competition. He has also led the tournament in terms of PIR (19.4 on average). He not only has signed some excellent numbers, but he has done it with some remarkable percentages. 65.6% in shots of two, 45.5% in triples and 87.5% in free throws.
With the Barcelona shirt it is the sixth time that Mirotic lifts a most valuable player trophy. He has 2 MVPs in the Endesa League, 2 in the Copa del Rey and one in the Endesa League finals.
The paradox is that this season in the Spanish competition he has not been included in the best quintet of the ACB, a circumstance that surprised negatively within Barcelona.
“I want to thank the competition for this award,” said Mirotic when collecting the award. In the history of the Euroleague there have been very illustrious players who have won the award, such as Aryvidas Sabonis, Tony Parker or Milos Teodosic, Andrei Kirilenko or Vassilis Spanoulis. Before Mirotic, the other Barcelona player who received this distinction was Juan Carlos Navarro in 2009.
“I would like to thank my team, the entity, coaches and players, because this is a team effort. A few weeks ago, Nick Calathes told me that if he was the MVP, I would remember him in the speech, and I told him that I would do it, like this I want to thank him because he makes my life easier on the track”, Mirotic joked
“The work is not done, last season we did an incredible job, we showed it, but this season we want to do the complete job”, added the Barcelona star.
The ideal team of the season was made up of Walter Tavares (Real Madrid), Sasha Vezenkov (Olympiakos), Mike James (AS Monaco), Shane Larkin (Anadolu Efes) and Nikola Mirotic (Barça). In addition, the Greek guard Kostas Sloukas (Olympiakos) received the ‘Magic Moment’ award for the best play, the Lithuanian guard Rokas Jokubaitis (Barça) the ‘Rising Star’ award for the best youngster, the interior American Kyle Hines (Olimpia Milan) the best defender, Serbian forward Vasilije Micic (Anadolu Efes) the ‘Alphonso Ford’ award for top scorer, and Greek coach Georgios Bartzokas (Olympiakos) the best coach.
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