Tribute to the champs: Nadir Hifi

Few players in competition history had his combination of talent, self-confidence, deep range and character at such a young age. At age 21, [Nadir Hifi](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/nadir-hifi/012640/) was one of Paris's scoring leaders since the start of the season. Hifi was chosen to the All-EuroCup second team and the competition's head coaches voted him as the Rising Star award runner-up. Four years ago, Hifi was still playing in the French fourth division. He went on to play for ESSM Le Portel Cote d'Opale in the French elite, staying there for three seasons and developing his flashy, unique playing style. Once he joined Paris, Hifi was ready to surprise the entire competition.

At age 21, Nadir Hifi was one of Paris's scoring leaders since the start of the season. Hifi was chosen to the All-EuroCup second team and the competition's head coaches voted him as the Rising Star award runner-up.

A tribute to the champs: Nadir Hifi, Paris

Hifi ranked fourth in scoring (16.7 ppg.) and second in three-pointers made (53) in his first season in the competition, getting 20 points or more seven times. He had some very brilliant moments throughout the regular season, scoring 27 points against Joventut Badalona in just his seventh game in the competition, and 26 against the London Lions. Hifi delivered in critical games against these teams, too, scoring 15 points in the quarterfinals against Joventut, and averaging 17.5 in the semifinals against London. Once in the finals against Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse, he averaged 13.5 points per game to be his team's second top scorer. His cool looks and fearless playing style have made him a fan favorite in Paris!

The new EuroCup champs never lost rhythm all season when their spark plug came in at point guard.

 Tribute to the champs: Mehdy Ngouama 

Keeping up a record-breaking offensive pace when joining the game from the bench is no easy task, but Paris Basketball point guard [Mehdy Ngouama](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/mehdy-ngouama/009556/) didn't miss a beat in meeting that challenge this season for the BKT EuroCup champions.

Ngouama had the difficult role of subbing for the season-long MVP of the competition, TJ Shorts, but he was able to keep up the pressure on opposing defenses again and again with his lightning-quick first step and his ability to find teammates with solid passes.

Mehdy Ngouama Top Plays of the Playoffs and Regular Season

Tribute to the Champs: Mehdy Ngouama, Paris Basketball

Ngouama appeared in 19 of Paris's 23 games, including ever one in the postseason, coming off the bench every time to take over the floor generalship duties. He finished the season having averaged 6.4 points, 2.2 assists and a 4.9 PIR in just over 13 minutes per game. His role was to keep the heat on opponents, and if anything, he sped up Paris's record-setting 97.0-point-per game offense when he was on the floor.

Whether racing on a fastbreak, skipping past defenders, or dishing out dimes, Ngouama was at one with the Paris style and filled in all the blanks possible on the way to the trophy!

Tribute to the champs: Paris Basketball

Tribute to the champs: Mehdy Ngouama

A veteran with a very specific role filled it with perfection on the way to the EuroCup title.

Tribute to the champs: Michael Kessens

As many of his Paris Basketball teammates, Michael Kessens made his BKT EuroCup debut this season and finished it in the best way possible: celebrating with his teammates on top of the podium.

 

Kessens and Bandja Sy played key veteran roles on a young roster. After finishing his college career, Kessens went on to play for several German teams, such as Eisbaeren Bremenhaven, Rasta Vechta, Fraport Skyliners Frankfurt and Telekom Baskets Bonn, where he met some of his current teammates, as well as head coach Tuomas Iisalo. This season in Paris, Kessens played a really important role off the bench as Leon Kratzer's backup, offering toughness, rebounds and effectiveness in the paint.

Michael Kessens was always ready when Coach Iisalo called his number. He had 8 points and 3 rebounds in the quarterfinals against Joventut Badalona and averaged 3.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and a PIR of 6.0 in the finals against Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse.

A tribute to the champs: Michael Kessens, Paris

Indeed, Kessens is one of the six players that signed for Paris this season and played for Coach Iisalo in the 2022-23 campaign at Bonn. Kessens embraced his back-up role and executed it close to perfection, averaging 4.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and a PIR of 4.2 in 10 regular season games.

 

Come the postseason, Kessens was always ready when Coach Iisalo called his number. He had 8 points and 3 rebounds in the quarterfinals against Joventut Badalona and averaged 3.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and a PIR of 6.0 in the finals against Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse. No rebounder was as efficient as Kessens led the finals with 12.9 rebounds per 40 minutes.

 

He was an important piece of the puzzle and got his reward by lifting the EuroCup trophy!  

The Paris forward rose to the occasion and time and time again in his first season in the BKT EuroCup

Tribute to the champs: Collin Malcolm

What a run it’s been for [Collin Malcolm](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/collin-malcolm/profile/012609/). Just two years ago, he was wrapping up a season in which he won the Cypriot League and Cup double. That came after a season each in Georgio and Finland. Now he is living the highlife in the French capital as a BKT EuroCup champion with Paris Basketball.

Malcolm was one of the players that arrived in Paris over the summer with Coach Tuomas Iisalo from Telekom Baskets Bonn, where they captured the Basketball Champions League trophy last season. The 2.00-meter forward did not need much time to adjust to the higher level of the EuroCup.

Tribute to Collin Malcolm

He was second on the team in scoring with 16 points on opening night against Wolves Vilnius and paced Paris with 22 points in 18 minutes in Round 3 Veolia Towers Hamburg. Malcolm posted PIRs above 20 in four of his first six EuroCup games and scored in double figures in all but three of his 17 regular-season appearances. His finest performance came in a Round 6 dismantling of Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv in which he had 23 points on 4-of-8 three-point shooting plus 7 rebounds for a PIR of 29 in less than 20 minutes.

For the season, Malcolm ranked seventh in the EuroCup in two-point accuracy at 71.2% and was the only non-center in the competition to shoot above 70% on twos and average at least 10 points. He was third on Paris in scoring with 12.5 points per game and second in PIR with 14.1. Malcolm also averaged 3.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 22:59 minutes per game.

Twas a season to remember for the 26-year-old Malcolm, who continues to rise to every challenge in front of him while racking up an impressive collection of trophies.

Euroleague Basketball joins the world basketball family in mourning Ruben Douglas, who passed away on Wednesday. Douglas was voted the 2006 BKT EuroCup Finals MVP after he helped Dynamo Moscow beat Aris Thessaloniki 60-73 in the championship game with 17 points.

 Euroleague Basketball mourns Ruben Douglas 

Euroleague Basketball joins the world basketball family in mourning Ruben Douglas, who passed away on Wednesday.

Douglas was voted the 2006 BKT EuroCup Finals MVP after he helped Dynamo Moscow beat Aris Thessaloniki in the championship game played in Charleroi, Belgium. He led Dynamo to a 60-73 victory with 17 points. A year earlier, Douglas led Fortitudo Bologna to the Italian League title. Fortitudo beat EA7 Emporio Armani Milan 3-1 in the finals and Douglas buried the title-clinching shot to win Game 4 at the buzzer. He passed away in Costa Rica at age 44.

He started his professional basketball career with Panionios Athens in Greece, and also played for Valencia Basket and Baloncesto Sevilla of Spain, Virtus Rome of Italy and Usak Universitesi Belediyespor of Turkiye. In 23 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague games with Fortitudo and Rome, Douglas averaged 13.0 points and 3.7 rebounds. He also took part in 40 EuroCup games with Valencia and Dynamo, averaging 15.2 points and 3.6 rebounds.

May he rest in peace.

Euroleague Basketball joins the world basketball family in mourning Ruben Douglas, who passed away on Wednesday.

 

Euroleague Basketball mourns Ruben Douglas

Justin Simon had quite the experience with Paris Basketball in his debut BKT EuroCup season. After joining the club in early December as an injury replacement for Sebastian Herrera, the 27-year-old played in 14 games and never tasted defeat as he went on to become a EuroCup champion.

Tribute to the Champs: Justin Simon

Unlike many of his Paris Basketball teammates, big man [Leon Kratzer](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/leon-kratzer/004512/) was not technically a rookie in the BKT EuroCup before winning the title this season. He may have played in just three previous EuroCup games five seasons earlier with Frankfurt Skyliners, but Kratzer's potential showed then. At just 21 years old, he posted a double-double in his team's final game against eventual 2018-19 semifinalist UNICS Kazan.

Flash forward to his EuroCup return with Paris this season, and Kratzer was everything a team full of go-go scorers could want from their anchor in the paint. He was the team's leading rebounder and one of top players on the offensive glass in the entire EuroCup, which is saying something since Paris didn't miss much and Kratzer played less than 17 minutes per game.

Leon Kratzer started in all 23 Paris Basketball games, averaging 5.4 points on 67.9% two-pointers, 4.9 rebounds, 1.0 blocks and a PIR of 8.1.

A tribute to the champs Leon Kratzer, Paris

Kratzer is one of six players who had played for head coach Tuomas Iisalo before arriving in Paris, and the trust that he inspired in his boss was clear. Kratzer started all 23 games at center for Paris, averaging 5.4 points on 67.9% two-point shooting, 4.9 rebounds, 1.0 blocks and a PIR of 8.1. His 2.1 offensive rebounds per game ranked 13th overall, but on a per-minute basis (5.1) he was tied for sixth. 

Kratzer was solid under the boards when it mattered most, averaging 6.5 rebounds in the semifinals against London Lions and 5.0 points in the finals against Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse. The man in the middle got the job done!

One of the three players who started every EuroCup game for Paris had a unique role on the title team.

Tribute to the champs: Leon Kratzer

Paris Basketball's elder statesman was everything his team needed on and off the court.

Tribute to the Champs: Bandja Sy

No player wants to hear he is the oldest member of the team, but [Bandja Sy](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/bandja-sy/005793/) handled that role with purpose. In a young club, and on a team packed with players who were either playing their first BKT EuroCup season or were teenagers just recently – or both – Sy was brought in last summer for his much-needed experience.

Sy played that role just as head coach Tuomas Iisalo had hoped, but no mistake, he did all the work on the floor, too.

At 33 years of age and in his seventh season in the competition, Sy finished with personal-high totals in just about every statistical category. In nine starts among his 22 appearances, and despite averaging just 19 minutes per game, Sy set his personal EuroCup career marks in points (132), three-pointers made (19), two-pointers made (30), free throw made (15), rebounds (59), assists (16), steals (14) and PIR (170).

At 33 years of age, and his seventh season in the competition, Bandja Sy finished the season with personal-high totals in just about every statistical category. In 22 appearances, nine as a starter, an averaging jut hort of 19 minutes per game, Sy set career marks in points (132), three-pointers made (19), two-pointers made (30), free throw made (15), rebounds (59), assists (16), steals (14) and PIR (170).

What's more, Sy was an instrumental part of Paris's early-season success. A brand new team that was building chemistry, with players getting acquainted with the competition, Sy had several performances that helped the team start the season unbeaten through seven games.

He had 10 points on 4-for-4 shooting in a 75-81 road win at Umana Reyer Venice. Then Sy posted 11 points on 5-for-5 shooting plus 6 rebounds, 3 steals and a block in a 102-106 overtime road win over London Lions, finishing with a PIR of 21, just 2 shy of his career high. Sy also shined as Paris drubbed Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv in Round 6, scoring 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting along with 5 rebounds and 2 assists in a 114-87 victory. Sy had five double-figure scoring games this season, and finished averaging 6.0 points, 2.7 rebounds and 7.7 PIR.

He also finished the season as a deserving BKT EuroCup champion.

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[Justin Simon](https://www.euroleaguebasketball.net/en/eurocup/players/justin-simon/011232/) had quite the experience with Paris Basketball in his debut BKT EuroCup season. After joining the club in early December as an injury replacement for Sebastian Herrera, the 27-year-old played in 14 games and never tasted defeat as he went on to become a EuroCup champion.

Simon made a good impression on his EuroCup debut, finishing with 8 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 steals in a 79-110 win at Wolves Vilnius in Round 10, before building on those numbers with 10 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal in a 100-70 victory against Umana Reyer Venice and 8 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists and 3 steals in a 120-91 triumph over Veolia Towers Hamburg. Three games, three wins and three times reaching the century mark in points. It was a sign of things to come.

The best plays of Paris Basketball guard Justin Simon in the 2023-24 BKT EuroCup season.

Justin Simon's top EuroCup plays

Always coming off the bench, Simon’s impact continued in the remainder of the regular season, ending with averages of 6.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.9 steals and a 9.0 PIR across nine games. Then, following a solid display in the quarterfinal win against Joventut Badalona, amassing 4 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals in almost 29 minutes on the floor, Simon really came to the fore in the semifinals against the London Lions. In Game 1, he posted 10 points, 6 rebounds and 1 steal in a 99-86 win, then recorded 11 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists in an 85-93 closeout win in the English capital in Game 2.

Simon never took a back seat in the EuroCup Finals against Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse, despite playing just 16:21 minutes in Game 2, as he finished the series with averages of 8.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.0 assists, 1.5 steals and a 9.5 PIR. Paris’s star guard pairing of TJ Shorts and Nadir Hifi earned headlines right across the continent, but the shooting guard was always on hand to come in and offer something positive from the bench. As such, even though he didn’t play the full season, we can say with confidence that Simon is a deserving EuroCup champion.

The Paris Basketball head coach, and newly crowned EuroCup champion, sat down with Javier Gancedo

A journey inside the mind of Tuomas Iisalo

There is not a coach in European basketball who is a hotter property than Paris Basketball boss Tuomas Iisalo.

After leading Telekom Baskets Bonn to the Basketball Champions League title in 2022-23, the Finnish tactician brought his talents to the French capital and secured another continental crown, this time the BKT EuroCup. The 41-year-old has already achieved history, but if he were to do the unthinkable and lift the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague next season, it would be an unprecedented success.

Perhaps that is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but with Iisalo, you never know. What is certain is that his coaching career is – and has been – on an upwards trajectory for quite a while now and he will be a valuable addition to next year’s EuroLeague.

Paris wowed fans across the continent by breaking records, notching win after win and blowing teams away with its offense, but Iisalo’s journey has been on a long time in the making.

"I started coaching in the sixth grade. I was 11 years old I think,” he tells Javier Gancedo of [EuroCupBasketball.net](http://EuroCupBasketball.net). “I had a stress-related knee injury and at that point in time, in the middle of the ‘90s or early ‘90s, the cure was six months of no sports. This was a huge blow, obviously.

“Luckily, there was a junior coach in our club who asked me to go and work as an assistant coach with the younger kids. And ever since then, there's been maybe one or two seasons that I haven't been involved in coaching, but it started back then. Now, 30 years have passed.”

"I started coaching in the sixth grade. I was 11 years old I think."

As an inquisitive teenager, Iisalo wanted to do everything in his powers to become the best basketball player that he could be. Little did he know back then, but all that time studying some legends of the game would end up helping him further down the line.

“I think the big change for me was in upper high school when I was around 15. I was in a small town of 7,000 people and just trying to find ways to get better as a player,” he explains. “Amazon was founded back then so you could start ordering books and I soon started ordering a lot of coaching books and VHS cassettes from the Duke team with Mike Dunleavy, Jay Williams, Carlos Boozer. I watched a lot of those games.

“My brother and I, we would spend every day working on our jump shots, watching the best shooters in the NBA – Reggie Miller losing the players on off-ball screens, how he would use his hands to create the openings, how he would read those screens; Allan Houston, I would watch \[his clips\] on a frame by frame with a VHS and then try to go to the backyard to emulate his shooting form.

“Then I was coaching my brother's team and at some point on [NBA.com](http://NBA.com), they would always feature a playbook from one of the teams. And we actually took some plays when my brother was like 13 from the Utah Jazz. It is a funny thing to laugh about right now. But the kids were excited and there was some structure.”

Even before his playing days came to an end, Iisalo was trying to put what he had learnt into practice. That involved setting up an academy, which started to bear fruit not long after, while one of the main people involved in that project ended up joining Iisalo in Paris.

“At one point, I think when I was 23 or 24, I moved back to Kouvola \[in Finland\],” he says. “I actually made a pitch to the club that, ‘Hey, I would like to, with another guy, take over the junior department.’ At the same time, I was playing professionally, I was the captain of the team at that point and had just made it to the national team.

“But what if I would also start to run these high-school practices and we build up an academy? And we did. It was really nice. One of the players that went through that was Matti Nuutinen, who had a nice national team career. There was also the player development group that Harri Mannonen ran in Kouvola which produced Tuomas Hirvonen, a very, very good player, as well as Alexander Madsen, who's playing for Andorra right now.

“I was in a good place in Kouvola. And really, I had the best of luck in meeting my mentor there, Harri Mannonen, who 20 years ago or almost 25 years ago was so far ahead of his time that people didn't understand. But it gave me that impulse that, ‘Wait, you can do it this way?’ This is amazing. It's not about how serious you are about this craft, it's about how much time you have to invest. Harri is working for us right now in Paris Basketball. He's basically mentoring all of our coaches and providing feedback about everything.”

A lot of Iisalo’s success has ultimately come down to hard work. Having finished his career as a 31-year-old in 2014, he had already completed all his coaching badges and was able to start work, getting his first job almost immediately with Tapiolan Honka in the Finnish first division.

“You can dream about things, but it was never something that I thought was going to lead to something like this,” Iisalo notes. “Through luck and through effort, it's taken me this far. It was a very active process from my side.

“I can say that I spent 15 to 20 hours every week just studying and coaching by myself. I wasn't in any university or any program. I just did it first to try to improve as a player, to try to understand what can make me a better player. It wasn’t always successful, but I always learned something.

“The more you invest in something, the harder it is to give that up. But I was very proactive in this way. And I think that's also a part of the reason why I think differently about the game. My inputs were very different. And that's why also the output, which is how our team plays, is also different from maybe many other programs.”

“You can dream about things, but it was never something that I thought was going to lead to something like this.”

It hasn’t all been butterflies and rainbows, though. Iisalo suffered a difficult first season at Honka and spent the beginning of the following campaign coaching the club’s junior B team. Then came a call from Crailsheim Merlins, who were fighting to stay alive in the German top flight. It was a challenge, but one Iisalo was more than willing to accept.

“When I went there, there were only 10 games left. I learned a lot during this time,” he comments. “I learned that a human being needs sleep and food. I learned this because I literally worked 16-hour days. At that point, I really couldn't sleep.

“I came in as a complete novice from Finland and I was telling myself, ‘Don't f\*ck this up.’ Not because of a lack of effort. You're never going to be ready for this, so you might as well do \[your best\] right now. I did everything I could. It wasn't enough. But after that experience, I learned a lot. The next season, we were successful in Crailsheim in the second league, but we couldn't manage to move up. But the next year, we did move up.”

Having suffered relegation with Crailsheim before bringing them back up at the second time of asking, the Finnish head coach was starting to feel the heat as the pressure started to mount during a tricky season back in the top tier. But, as he alludes to, it ended up helping him big time in the long term.

“Seba \[Herrera, Paris’s all-action forward\] was with me for the second year and it was a very, very difficult season,” Iisalo recalls. “I learned a lot but almost paid a very high price by losing my job because of the results. And that's obviously a reality that every coach has to go through at some point.

“I was lucky enough to keep my job mid-season and we turned around our process to a much more demanding direction. It was a part of my personal growth. At some point, we developed a very good methodology for teaching our system and getting the players to understand what we want in certain situations.

“When I started out as a coach, I was using a collection of drills, exercises and sets from my previous coaches or seeing this at a clinic or this team did this, but it was not very coherent. It was not a logical combination. And then you develop the tools, you develop the methodology.”

"I developed a very fearless attitude in my opinion where I made decisions that were not viewed as popular from the outside."

All coaches have their own idols and people who they have drawn ideas from, and that’s also true of Iisalo. In particular, two Spanish coaches had a way of seeing basketball that caused plenty of intrigue for the 41-year-old, one of whom is a former EuroCup champion and the other a former EuroCup Coach of the Year.

“I learned a lot from coaches like Aito Garcia, who was coaching at ALBA Berlin, because we always lost to them by 30-40 points and I was like, ‘How is this possible?’ I have to learn what he does,” Iisalo recalls. “For example, I would watch his YouTube clinics in Spanish – you couldn’t get subtitles in those. I would write into Google Translate what I thought he was saying and translate those. Then a whole new world opened up for me because it was a very different type of way to organize basketball in your mind than the one I had grown up with, like maybe the Balkan school or the American type of approach.

“The second one who helped a lot in that was Pedro Martinez, who also had great clinics online and would outline the drills to work on for specific concepts and always talked about doing the basic things at a high level – that is the key. I really took that to heart and we developed a nice methodology.”

However, the thing that really provided the biggest change in Iisalo’s coaching journey came during the 2018-19 season, when Crailsheim just survived relegation by the skin of their teeth. For Iisalo, he knew that he never wanted to be in that situation again and thus looked to increase the standards to an even higher level.

“I didn’t want to be the weak link,” he recalls. “At that point I developed much thicker skin. I developed a very fearless attitude in my opinion where I made decisions that were not viewed as popular from the outside or were met with questions, such as taking players from smaller leagues. But I was like, ‘We see something in this and we are the ones who have to make these decisions.’

“You cannot take decisions through fear. You have to make them through your intuition and through the information that you've gathered. This was when the results really changed. After this we won 75-80% of all of our games, first in Crailsheim and then in Bonn. That number went up and now in Paris, obviously in the EuroCup, it’s been extremely high. That was a big personal change during this because I was able to finally, five years after I had retired as a player, kind of kill the player inside me and become a real coach. After that, it's been a very different experience.”