The Efes riddle

Over the past two seasons, Jayson Granger made a name for himself in Malaga. In his first season, Granger made his Turkish Airlines Euroleague debut with Unicaja and scored an unforgettable buzzer-beater in the regular season finale to lift the team into the Top 16. And last season Granger took his game to another level and averaged double-figures in scoring for the first time.

Now with Anadolu Efes Istanbul, Granger leads his new team into Spain to face his former squad on Friday. The team teams are tied for third place in Group E with 2-2 records and very well could be fighting tooth and nail for a playoff spot the rest of the Top 16. Typically, one might say that coach Joan Plaza has some sort of advantage in such a situation. After all, he coached Granger and surely knows his strengths and weaknesses. And while the reverse is also somewhat true, in this case the holdovers from Granger’s run at Unicaja are all forwards and big men, thus not players Granger will match up with directly. 

But as its opponents all know by now, the headache when it comes to the Efes point guard position is much greater than finding the way to stop Granger. It is Also finding a way to limit the man who is now the Euroleague’s all-time leader in assists per game… Thomas Heurtel. 

Heurtel’s 5.33 assists per game over his 101 game career are the most of any player and he is on pace to set the competition’s single-season record too with 8.0 assists per game this season. He could also become the new leader in total assists for a season too; that record is 180 set by Panathinaikos great Dimitris Diamantidis. And with 10 games to go before the end of the Top 16, Heurtel is 68 away from that number. 

Here’s the wild part. Granger and Heurtel are essentially splitting time at the point: Heurtel has started eight games and is averaging just more than 27 minutes per game; Granger has started six games and has played only four fewer minutes than Heurtel for the season. So on the average, Efes coach Dusko Ivkovic not only has one of the league’s top point guards on the floor at all times, but for more than a third of the game he has two of them! To solve the Efes riddle, you need to be able to guard two great point guards!

Playing with two top-notch point guards is not new or rare. In fact, most teams are trying it nowadays. The champs have Sergio Llull and Sergio Rodriguez. Fenerbahce Istanbul has Bobby Dixon and Kostas Sloukas. CSKA Moscow fields Nando De Colo together with Milos Teodosic. Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar employs Malcolm Delaney and Dontaye Draper. Panathinaikos uses Diamantidis alongside Nick Calathes. And so on…

However in many of those cases, one of the two guards may not share the classic point guard characteristics. One might be a tough taller, which aids him on offense, but also slower, which could hinder on defense. Not so with Heurtel and Granger. And since their styles are different – Heurtel is pass-first, but not afraid to shoot; Granger loves to penetrate, but always looks for the open man – opposing playmakers need to prepare twice as hard to be ready for each of them. 

Coach Plaza has three players that are likely to see most –if not all – of the minutes defending Heurtel and Granger: Alberto Diaz, Nemanja Nedovic and DeMarcus Nelson. They ae sure to have seen video to prepare and will know how some teams pushed Heurtel into too many turnovers. And which teams found ways to keep Granger from getting good looks at the basket. They are also likely to notice that thus far, no team has really found a way to silence both Heurtel and Granger. Herein lies the riddle Unicaja will try to solve this week to get a luck up on Efes. 

Elsewhere in Round 5

Granger is not the only player with strong ties to his Round 5 opponent. Fenerbahce hosts Luka Zoric and Cedevita Zagreb on Friday. Zoric spent the previous two seasons with Fenerbahce. He helped the club win the 2014 Turkish championship. Zoric played under Coach Obradovic and alongside a handful of its current players. And James White made his European basketball debut with Fenerbahce during the 2007-08 season. Though he doesn’t have any ties to the current Fener squad, he will get a chance to see his former teammates and Fenerbahce legends Omer Onan and Mirsad Turkcan.

Paulius Jankunas is practically a Zalgiris Kaunas lifer. He was born in Kaunas and is now in his 12th Euroleague season with the club, the first of which he played alongside the great Arvydas Sabonis. Today he is team captain. However in the middle of his long run with Zalgiris, Jankunas spent a single season with Khimki Moscow Region. That 2009-10 campaign was Khimki’s first in the Euroleague. Jankunas was accompanied there by another Zalgiris veteran, Robertas Javtokas; it is the only season Jankunas played outside of Zalgiris. On Friday he too will visit his old stomping grounds.

Nikos Zisis of Brose Baskets Bamberg has already made history with CSKA. On Thursday, he will try to make history against it. Zisis played two seasons for CSKA between 2007 and 2009 and he helped CSKA win the 2008 Euroleague championship. Three players – forwards Victor Khryapa, Andrey Vorontsvich and Nikita Kurbanov – remain from his time at the club. Amazingly, Bamberg has never beaten CSKA before. The all-time series is 10-0 in favor of the army men. Can Zisis deliver his new team a peace of history with a victory in Moscow?