Bojan Dubljevic is having an amazing season
Bojan Dubljevic is having another great season for Valencia. Besides being the captain of the squad, he is the favourite of the fans in La Fonteta and is considered a local hero and a legend for this team, despite not being born in Valencia or Spain.
While he struggled in the first two rounds of this EuroLeague season, when he failed to score any points, Dubljevic started to play better and better and in the last four games he scored 23, 28, 14 and 26 points, with amazing efficiency in shooting: he has 22/26 on 2 point FG, 13/21 3 point FG and 8/9 from the free throw line in this 4 game stretch. Overall he has 13.7 ppg and 4.6 rpg in this EuroLeague season. In the ACB he scores less so far, with 9.7 ppg but has a solid average of 7.1 rebounds per game.
The Montenegrin, who can play both power forward and center, is in his 11th season with Valencia. It’s a rare thing in today’s basketball for a player to play this long for the same club, especially considering he is a foreign player.
Despite being an important club in Spanish basketball, Valencia has never won an ACB League before the arrival of Dubljevic in 2012. This changed in 2017, when the orange team coached by Pedro Martinez defeated Real Madrid in the final, boosted by an amazing performance by Bojan Dubljevic who was named Finals MVP. In the same year, Valencia won the Spanish Supercopa too after defeating Gran Canaria and Dubljevic had the highest PIR in the game.
It wasn’t just the Spanish League where Valencia started to thrive after Dubljevic arrived, but in continental competitions, they also reached glory together. The Montenegrin has won two EuroCup titles, and while after the 2014 success, he was named the Rising Star of EuroCup, in 2019 he was included in the EuroCup First Team and Valencia beat Alba Berlin in the Finals (in the decisive game Dubljevic had the highest PIR with 27).
Image credit: EuroLeague
Imre Halasz
