TJ Shorts leads the EuroLeague in assists and is also first in the last five games
Who's hot: A three-way race to become the assists king
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Three players are leading the race to be the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague's assists king this season: Paris Basketball star TJ Shorts, Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv ball handler Tamir Blatt and Real Madrid playmaker Facu Campazzo are in the race to reach the history books, just like Codi Miller-McIntyre, back then with Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, did last season (7.3 APG).
Shorts reached the February break ahead of everyone else, dishing 176 assists in 24 games for an average of 7.3 per night.
Blatt led this race for the large part of the season and is currently second with 7.2 assists per game. Campazzo is third with 6.9 assists per game, followed by ALBA Berlin's Martin Hermannsson (5.8 APG) and AS Monaco's Mike James (5.6 APG).
Shorts is on the right track to set a new season assists record. The man who currently holds that honor is Nick Calathes, who dished 286 for Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens in the 2018-19 season. Shorts needs 111 assists in nine games to make history – 12.3 assists per contest.
Shorts climbed to first place by dishing more assists than anyone in the last five games, as many as 38 (7.6 APG). He managed to do that while picking up just 7 turnovers for an assist-to-turnover ratio of 5.43. Shorts set this season's single-game assists record in Round 22, dishing 14 in a 96-83 home win over Maccabi.
Shorts is also the only player to rank Top 5 in points and assists this season. He ranks fifth in scoring with 18.0 points per game. Shorts is also fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.74), way ahead of his main contenders in the assists king race, Blatt (2.27) and Campazzo (2.97).
Interestingly, Shorts is the only player featured in both lists: most assists in the last five games and in the entire season, leading both. FC Bayern Munich's Nick Weiler-Babb ranks second in the last five games (7.2 APG), followed by Panathinaikos's Kostas Sloukas (6.6 APG), Calathes (6.5 APG), Baskonia's Trent Forrest (5.8 APG) and FC Barcelona's Tomas Satoransky (5.8 APG).
It should be no surprise that veteran players like Sloukas, Calathes and Satoransky improve their assists numbers as the season go on. Sloukas, the 2024 Final Four MVP and a four-time champion, had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.22 in his opening 20 games. Since then, Sloukas had 33 assists and just 5 turnovers for a 6.60 ratio.
When it comes to assists, Shorts has been rock-solid all season, getting 4 or more in all games bar one. He had three double-doubles of points and assists this season, just as Blatt and Weiler-Babb. The other two other players to get multiple double-doubles involving points and assists are Campazzo and Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade's Carlik Jones, with twice apiece.