The EuroLeague newcomers are already in rare company with 10 straight wins
Stats review: A dive into Paris's win streak and defense
Stats
4 Mins read
Paris Basketball has won 10 straight games to rise to the top of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague standings and position themselves to accomplish a truly remarkable feat.
The EuroLeague has an interesting relationship with winning streaks, but the tipping point into special territory is 11 games. Sixteen teams in league history have won 11 or more games in a row with Real Madrid narrowly missing becoming the 17th with their run to start last year. Only four of those teams went on their runs in the nine seasons since the EuroLeague transitioned to its modern format. With parity continuing to rise in recent years, the windows of opportunity for a team to string together double-digit wins is extremely small.
At this point, it is a massive achievement to rattle off a run like Paris’s. However, what it means in the long run remains pretty nebulous. Only three teams to go on a winning streak or 11 or more games have gone on to lift the trophy at the end of the season and the last team to do both did so all the way back in the 2009-10 season. Even when three teams achieved long winning streaks during the 2013-14 season, that group did not produce a champion. Winning streaks have, in recent history in particular, guaranteed little postseason success, though we’ll never know if a dominant Anadolu Efes team or Real Madrid would have paid off their streaks during the abridged 2019-20 season.
Even if Paris still has as grueling a path forward as any of their predecessors, they deserve a massive amount of credit for continuing to find ways to win. At this point, it takes some good bounces to keep a streak alive; Paris has won all three of its one-possession games after dropping their first two early in the year, but Tiago Splitter’s team has made real progress to set their current course.
A big chunk of that progress can be traced to one specific area: their suddenly stifling pick-and-roll defense. For reference, the average EuroLeague possession has been worth 1.01 points per possession this season - on par with the record highs from a few seasons ago. The average possession created out of a pick-and-roll is worth 1.00 points per possession this year - unsurprisingly similar with just under 40% of all possessions originating in ball screens. Over the first four games of the season, Paris allowed 1.08 points per possession created out of a pick-and-roll, the equivalent of ranking 17th in the league at the moment. Since then, they have allowed just 0.90 points per pick-and-roll possession, surging up the leaderboards to close in on Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul which has conceded a league-best 0.92 points per possession on the year overall.
Nearly going from worst to first in a critical aspect of the game, there’s obviously more at work in the improvement than one single adjustment. Not only has Paris been more disciplined on the ball, done a better job pushing ball handlers inside the arc, shown more of a sense of urgency in rotation, and better game plans for opposing roll men, but opposing offenses have also made only 34% of the catch-and-shoot threes they have created out of the two-man game against them over their 10 wins compared to 45% over their first four games.
It will be fascinating to see if Paris can sustain its newfound defensive prowess through the regular season. While there is bound to be some regression to the mean in the second half as opposing teams learn from their initial matchups, this team’s ability to find a way through has been perhaps the biggest story of the season so far - made all the more impressive given they are facing the unforgiving gauntlet of the EuroLeague for the first time.