The two guards put on a clinic at OAKA on Friday night
TJ Shorts outshined Kendrick Nunn in MVP-flavored battle
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Regular Season
Round 32 of 34
Group Regular Season
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It’s not long before we find out which star of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague will be named this season’s Most Valuable Player, and two of the leading contenders served up a memorable duel on Friday night.
For Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens, Kendrick Nunn. For Paris Basketball, TJ Shorts.
Both have delivered magnificent seasons, and both performed even beyond their usual standards to take center stage in a thrilling encounter in the Greek capital, coming agonizingly close to recording only the fifth triple-double in EuroLeague history.
Nunn and Shorts might have narrowly missed out on that accolade, but they still led their respective teams in scoring, assists, rebounds and PIR to thoroughly enhance their MVP credentials – and perhaps leave Olympiacos Piraeus forward Sasha Vezenkov, the other main contender, wondering whether the prize might not come his way after all.
Nunn paced Panathinaikos with 22 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds, while Shorts was even more impressive as he powered Paris’s thrilling 98-101 victory with 20 points, 14 assists and 9 boards.
Of course, individual numbers matter less to elite performers than victories, but Shorts had to admit he would have liked to claim the elusive triple-double. “That hurts a little bit!” he laughed, when informed live on EuroLeague TV that he had fallen just short of the milestone.
“I guess I couldn’t find more rebounds, but I’m out there trying to do whatever I can for my team. Today it was scoring, assisting, playmaking, it doesn’t matter, I’m just trying to help win.”
Trying to help win? Shorts certainly did that, and his season has by no means finished yet. Paris is now locked in a five-way tie for sixth place, and will travel to face one of those other teams – Real Madrid, no less – in Round 33.
Shorts is already looking ahead to that challenge and fully grasps the importance of his team’s win over Panathinaikos, stating: “We’re coming down to the end of the season where every game matters. Everybody knows what the standings look like, it’s posted everywhere, and to win like this against the champs in an environment like this, it’s a huge win to boost us to keep fighting.
“We will never quit. We lost the last one against Fenerbahce in a heartbreaking way, and for us to be able to respond like this two days later is huge. It just shows the fight within our team, our coaching staff, everybody within Paris Basketball to keep fighting and try to do something at the end of the season.”
That’s for sure. But the question is: exactly when and how will Paris’s season end?