Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season – Round 3 MVP: Luke Sikma, ALBA Berlin

Luka Sikma had a masterful performance for ALBA Berlin in smashing Panathinaikos Athens 94-65 on Wednesday night to earn the MVP honor for Round 3 of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season. Sikma finished with a career-high performance index rating of 33, the highest in Round 3, and set another personal best by pulling down 15 rebounds, which is also the EuroLeague season high. He finished the game with 16 points, making 4 of 7 two-pointers and 2 of 3 threes, dishing 6 assists and drawing 4 personal fouls. This is Sikma’s third MVP of the Round honor in four EuroLeague seasons. The next-best PIR of 32 was shared by Markus Howard of Cazoo Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz and Vasilije Micic of Anadolu Efes Istanbul. Howard shined with 30 points on 7-for-12 three-point shooting, 3 assists and 10 fouls drawn in a 92-75 home win over Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade. Micic had 22 points, 8 assists, 2 steals and 9 fouls drawn in a 91-92 home loss against Valencia Basket. Following them was Jordan Loyd of AS Monaco, who had 21 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists for a PIR 30 in a road loss against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv. Rounding out the list of Round 3 top performers is Sasha Vezenkov of Olympiacos Piraeus, whose PIR of 29 came from collecting 23 points and 12 rebounds in a road win over Real Madrid.

Individual highs: Markus Howard, Baskonia, 30 points

Baskonia’s Markus Howard led all players in Round 3 by scoring 30 points. He is also this season’s overall scoring leader with 25.0 points per game. Sikma bested all rebounders in this round, with 15. Vezenkov is the overall rebounding leader this season, with 11.7 per game. Four players had 8 assists this round: Micic, Chris Jones of Valencia, Nick Calathes of Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul and Sergio Rodriguez of Real. Lorenzo Brown of Maccabi leads the league with 8.0 assists per game. Keenan Evans of Zalgiris Kaunas and Darius Thompson of Baskonia each had 4 steals, the most in Round 3. Thompson leads the steals charts with 2.3 per game. Donta Hall and Georgios Papagiannis topped all players in Round 3 with 4 blocks apiece. Mathias Lessort of Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade leads the EuroLeague with 2.3 blocks per game.