Can Paris surprise also Anadolu Efes?
Anadolu Efes will host Paris Basketball on Thursday night in Istanbul, in a game that will count as Round 11 of the 2024-25 EuroLeague regular season.
It will be a game between two teams playing great lately. The hosts won both their EuroLeague games in Spain last week, first defeating Baskonia in Vitoria-Gasteiz 89-84 and then they conquered Madrid too with a 74-64 win against Real Madrid, a victory that took Tomislav MIjatovic’s team to a 6-4 record, tied for 7th place with Monaco and Zalgiris. Unfortunately for Efes, they didn’t finish the week undefeated as they suffered their first defeat in the Turkish League on Sunday against city rivals Fenerbahce. Efes is still missing star player Shane Larkin who sustained an injury in the Round 5 win against Milan, but he is expected to return soon. Elijah Bryant is the team’s top scorer so far in the EuroLeague with an average of 13 points per game, followed by Darius Thompson and Shane Larkin.
Paris Basketball has had an amazing season so far in the club’s first year in the EuroLeague. The team was founded only 6 years ago and they already have a EuroCup trophy that allowed them to participate in Europe’s premier competition. Tuomas Iisalo was the coach who created the amazing team last year when Paris was the best in EuroCup. Despite qualifying for the EuroLeague, the Finnish coach left in the summer to coach in the NBA and his place was taken by Tiago Splitter. Many fans had doubts about the chances the French team had in the EuroLeague as they didn’t transfer any star players in the offseason and the roster wasn’t considered good enough. However, Paris is on a 6 game-winning streak at the moment and is tied for second place in the standings with a 7-3 record. Last week they defeated Zalgiris at home and even more impressively they won in Barcelona. Before this, they already defeated teams like Panathinaikos. Partizan or Monaco so coach Splitter’s team should be taken seriously and they could be the surprise of the season.
Imre Halasz
Image credit: EuroLeague
