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Awards Watch: All-EuroLeague Second Team
Awards
5 Mins read
With the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague on a two-week hiatus from games, it is the perfect time to look back at the top performers from the first 26 rounds of the regular season and to look ahead and make our early picks for some of the end-of-season awards. Several Euroleague.net staff members will take part and reveal their choices. After sharing their selections for the Alphonso Ford EuroLeague Top Scorer Trophy on Monday, the EuroLeague Best Defender Trophy on Tuesday and the All-EuroLeague First Team on Wednesday, today we look to the All-EuroLeague Second Team.
Shane Larkin, Wade Baldwin, Alec Peters, Jan Vesely, Walter Tavares
by Igor Petrinovic
When it comes to the playoff picture, Anadolu Efes Istanbul has been on the outside looking in throughout the season, but Shane Larkin has been doing his best to keep Efes relevant. He ranks second in average PIR (20.8), third in scoring (17.6 ppg.) and seventh in assists (5.3 apg.). Wade Baldwin ranks fourth in scoring (17.4 ppg.), ninth in assists (5.1 apg.) and sixth in average PIR (18.5), overcoming injuries to be a force in a chaotic season for Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv. Enjoying a career-best season, Alec Peters has been a difference-maker for Olympiacos Piraeus with 14.3 points on an outstanding 54.8% three-point shooting, third-best in the league. Jan Vesely (12.9 ppg.) is the most consistent performer for second-placed FC Barcelona. No player averaging 12.0 or more points plays fewer minutes than Vesely (21:04), and he ranks second in per-40 min PIR (31.5). Real Madrid center Walter Tavares makes an impact on the floor that goes beyond his numbers, which rank him second in blocks (1.6 bpg.) and third in rebounds (6.8 rpg.) while also averaging 10.1 points and a PIR of 16.3.
Shane Larkin, Keenan Evans, Toko Shengelia, Chima Moneke, Walter Tavares
by Javier Gancedo
Most of my All-EuroLeague Second Team features players who definitely made their teams better, but didn't compete for the top spots in the regular-season standings. Toko Shengelia is leading Virtus Segafredo Bologna to a comeback season, pacing the team in rebounds (5.5 rpg.) and PIR (18.1) and ranking second in scoring (14.5 ppg.) and assists (3.6 apg.). Chima Moneke of Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz has proven himself at this level, leading the EuroLeague in rebounds (7.3 rpg.) along with solid numbers (14.2 ppg., 1.2 spg., 19.3 PIR). Shane Larkin is playing his best basketball in years and Keenan Evans showed us that his injury belongs to the past, but Anadolu Efes Istanbul and Zalgiris Kaunas, respectively, are two wins behind the Play-In Showdown cutoff. Walter Tavares of Real Madrid has battled injuries all season, and that is why he is not one of my first-team choices. Tavares's numbers remain solid: 10.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, 1.6 blocks and a PIR of 16.3.
Wade Baldwin, Keenan Evans, Shavon Shields, Toko Shengelia, Vincent Poirier
by Geoff Gillingham
Some of these players selected will feel hard done by to not be in my All-EuroLeague First Team group, but getting Second Team honors still means they are among the top 10 players in the league this season. My first pick for the Second Team is Maccabi’s Wade Baldwin. He’s been red-hot in the second half of the campaign and is certainly worthy of a spot in this five. Similarly, Zalgiris’s Keenan Evans has been on a tear on the offensive end since the midway point of the season, improving his scoring average to 17.1 ppg, which is fifth best in the league. His 18.6 PIR is shared with Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens’s Mathias Lessort for fourth spot overall, too.
I see that my colleagues have not gone with EA7 Emporio Armani Milan’s Shavon Shields, but for me, he has been really impressive all year long. Results have not gone as Milan would have hoped, but Shields has been one of the few shining lights for the Italian club, ranking sixth in the EuroLeague in scoring (16.8 ppg.) and ninth in PIR (17.4). Next, a player who I seriously deliberated putting in my First Team: Toko Shengelia of Virtus. Like Shields, Shengelia has responded in perfect fashion following a season blighted by injury, with the Georgian forward’s inspirational performances allowing Virtus to find itself in the upper echelons of the standings.
Rounding out my All-EuroLeague Second Team picks is Vincent Poirier of Real Madrid. Perhaps my selection is a controversial one given that my three colleagues have all gone with Walter Tavares, but I believe Poirier has been Real’s more impressive center this year. Playing 19:18 minutes on average compared to 23:07 for Tavares, Poirier has averaged 9.3 points on 70.0% two-point shooting, the fifth-best accuracy in the league, while he leads the league in blocks.
Wade Baldwin, Chima Moneke, Toko Shengelia, Alec Peters, Walter Tavares
by Frankie Sachs
The five players I list here are all All-EuroLeague First Team talents and it should not be seen as a knock on any of them that they are my Second Team picks. My choices are heavily influenced by how I think things might look by the end of the season, so let’s take a look. Wade Baldwin has been simply outstanding for Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, which has a favorable schedule the rest of the way. However, if the back injury suffered by backcourt mate Lorenzo Brown causes teams to smother Baldwin or for Maccabi to struggle, it would be tough to make a First Team case for him.
Chima Moneke’s numbers and Toko Shengelia’s leadership both make them worthy of First Team consideration, but their respective teams, Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz and Virtus Segafredo Bologna, both face very tough schedules the rest of the way and anything short of very strong individual and team finishes leaves them on the second team. Alec Peters is playing his best season with great numbers for a contending Olympiacos Piraeus team and Walter Tavares of Real Madrid is as impactful a player there is in the competition, but their numbers trail the best players at their respective positions and leave them as Second Team players, for now.