The highest-scoring game of the season and the lowest were played in the same round.
Real Madrid and Panathinaikos put up 227 points between them on Wednesday. Olympiacos and Crvena Zvezda managed 119 on Friday. Nothing else this season has come close at either end.
Panathinaikos won the first one 115-112 and sit first at 8-2. Real Madrid had won six in a row before that night.
Panathinaikos are top, and the defence that took them there has gone
They won in Madrid by three points, and they won by scoring.
That is new. Through their first six games Panathinaikos had a Net Rating of plus 20.0, which is the points a team wins by per 100 possessions. Over the last four games it is minus 0.3. They have been outscored across the stretch that carried them to the top of the table.
The change sits at one end of the floor. Opponents' Effective FG% against them was 47.7% in those first six games and is 55.8% in the last four. Effective FG% is shooting accuracy with a made three counted as worth more than a two. Panathinaikos' own figure has not moved: 56.7% then, 56.9% now. Teams have simply started making shots against them.
So the 3-1 record of the last four is kinder than the play behind it. They beat Baskonia by six, beat Milan by five, lost at Anadolu Efes by fifteen, and won in Madrid by three.
Kendrick Nunn is why they won that one. He scored 33 points and missed two shots all night, both of them threes: eight from eight inside the arc, three from five outside it, eight from eight at the line. Mathias Lessort added 20 points and nine rebounds. Nunn has played four games this season and averages 20.2 points in 23 minutes.
Olympiacos scored 57
Their 62-57 loss to Crvena Zvezda is the lowest-scoring game of the season by six points.
This is an offensive collapse. Opponents' Effective FG% against Olympiacos is where it was, 53.0% through the first six games and 53.9% in the last four. Their own has dropped from 56.8% to 48.6%, and their scoring has gone from 122.8 points per 100 possessions to 103.1. Two of the six lowest team scores in the competition this season belong to them.
They are 7-3 and fourth anyway.
Crvena Zvezda are the opposite case. Ten days ago we wrote that they were winning with the worst shooting in Europe. Their Effective FG% across the last four games is 58.3%, up from 48.7% in the first six, and the defence stayed. They are second at 7-3, and across the season they allow 100.6 points per 100 possessions, the best figure in the league.
Barcelona and Zalgiris both won their fourth in a row
Both streaks are four games long. Behind them are two different teams.
Zalgiris have won by 20, 17, 7 and 16. Their Net Rating has gone from minus 6.2 across the first six games to plus 19.8 across the last four, the biggest turn in the league. Opponents' Effective FG% against them fell from 55.1% to 47.7%, and they give up two fewer offensive rebounds a game. They make teams miss, then they collect the miss.
Barcelona have won by 8, 4, 4 and 3. Nineteen points across four games, against Zalgiris' sixty. Their Net Rating moved from plus 0.9 to plus 6.2, and little underneath it changed: opponents' Effective FG% went from 56.2% to 55.3%, and Barcelona's own slipped from 57.7% to 57.0%.
Four wins each. One of these teams is playing much better. The other is winning close games, which counts the same in the table and tells you less about next week.
Nadir Hifi had the best night of the round
Hifi scored 28 points with nine assists and six rebounds in Paris' 95-90 win at Anadolu Efes, for a PIR of 39. PIR is EuroLeague's all-in-one rating: it adds up everything a player does well, then subtracts the misses, the turnovers and the fouls. Thirty-nine is the highest of the round and the third highest of the season.
He went seven from seven at the free-throw line and finished the night at 82.0% True Shooting, which measures scoring efficiency with threes and free throws counted at their real worth.
He has played seven of Paris' ten games. His PIR in the last three is 17, 30 and 39. Shooting that hot usually cools, so the direction is the story and the number will move.
Cameron Payne scored 33 for Anadolu Efes in the same game, with seven threes from thirteen attempts, and lost.
Jonas Valanciunas has not had a bad game yet
Valanciunas had 12 points and 11 rebounds at Besiktas, which was his tenth straight useful night and nowhere near his best.
That is the point of him. His lowest PIR in ten games is 14. Among the 163 players with nine games or more, nobody has a higher floor. His highest is 25, so his worst night and his best night are eleven points of PIR apart, the smallest gap of any player in the league averaging 15 or better. He sits on 19.7 PIR in 21.3 minutes.
The Zalgiris turn is a team defensive turn, and his own numbers barely moved inside it: 22.5 minutes a game across the four wins against 20.5 before, with roughly two extra rebounds. He gives them the same thing every week, which is rarer than a big night.
Next
Round 11 runs from the 11th to the 13th of November. Real Madrid host Crvena Zvezda, and Panathinaikos host Barcelona on the Friday, first place against the longest streak.
Every result is on the Round 10 page, and the standings show the top seven inside a single win.
