Nine rounds in, second place and ninth place are one win apart.
Panathinaikos and Olympiacos are 7-2. Crvena Zvezda, Real Madrid, Valencia, Hapoel, Fenerbahce, Dubai and Barcelona are all 6-3. Nobody is pulling away.

Seven teams went 2-0 in the double week: Real Madrid, Olympiacos, Crvena Zvezda, Barcelona, Zalgiris, ASVEL and Paris. Seven went 0-2, Fenerbahce and Partizan among them.

Real Madrid have won six straight

They lost their first three games. They have not lost since.

Across the six wins they are scoring 100.7 a game and conceding 88.6, with margins of 9, 19, 14, 18 and 19 in the last five. The 95-76 win over Fenerbahce was the clearest.

Six games ago they had lost by one, by ten and by four. Now they have the best run in the competition.

Crvena Zvezda found their shooting

Ten days ago we wrote that Crvena Zvezda were winning with the worst shooting in Europe, and that the question was whether the offence would ever arrive.

It arrived. They beat Maccabi 100-78 and Bayern 103-73.

In their first seven games they scored 81.0 a night at 48.6% effective and 31.2% from three, the worst marks in the league. In the last two: 101.5 points, 65.3% effective, 44.9% from three.

Two games is two games. But a team that was already second in defence has scored 100 twice in four days, and sits third with a difference of plus 77.

Olympiacos, Barcelona and the two French clubs

Olympiacos won at Besiktas and beat Milan to reach 7-2, second on difference behind Panathinaikos, who lost at Anadolu Efes on Friday.

Barcelona have won three in a row and sit 6-3, and the turn is at the defensive end: 120.4 points per 100 conceded through six games, 115.3 across the three wins. Their shooting barely moved.

ASVEL and Paris both went 2-0, the first good week either has had. ASVEL beat Partizan and Baskonia, Paris won at Dubai and at Maccabi. Both are still 15th and 16th, so it fixes nothing, but it is the first sign of life from either.

The cost of a week like this

Five important players came out of these two rounds hurt. Jean Montero had meniscus surgery on Friday and is expected to miss around six months. Tomas Satoransky left the floor on a stretcher in Dubai with a concussion. Real Madrid lost two in one night against Fenerbahce: Theo Maledon with a knee sprain and Mikael Jantunen with a complete tear of the plantar fascia, with no timetable given. Nikola Mirotic was hurt against Fenerbahce as well.

They join the biggest absence of the season so far. Mike James tore his Achilles tendon at Crvena Zvezda in Round 3, had surgery the next day and is out for 7 to 9 months, which ends his season. Anadolu Efes signed Cameron Payne to replace the man they built the summer around.

Four games in eight days does the rest. The teams that came through this week unbeaten were not only the best ones, they were the ones that still had their rotation on Friday night.

The two MVPs

Round 8 went to two players at once. Antonio Blakeney scored 35 in Hapoel's 118-88 win over Anadolu Efes, the highest score any team has managed this season, and he shared the award with Elijah Bryant, who had 16 points and 12 assists in the same game. Both finished on a PIR of 35. It is only the third time in the competition's history that two teammates have shared it, and it was Bryant's third of the season already.

Round 9 belonged to Lonnie Walker IV. Besiktas won 103-101 at Virtus and Walker had the best individual night of the week: 30 points, seven threes from 11 attempts, five assists, and a PIR of 36, the highest of either round.

Next

Round 10 is played on the 4th, 5th and 6th of November, a normal week after two of these. Every result from the double week is on the Round 8 and Round 9 pages, and the standings show how little separates the top nine.