Tamir Blatt was a man on a mission for Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv on the opening night of the 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season, erupting for a career-best performance and earning Round 1 MVP honors for the first-ever time along the way.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old blew his previous high in PIR out of the water, beating his previous best of 20 with a 36 PIR in Maccabi\u2019s 89-82 win over LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne. He was a nightmare for the opposition defense all night long, setting new personal bests in scoring (21 points) and assists (12) in just under 29 minutes on the floor. Shooting-wise, Blatt was near-perfect, going 4 for 5 inside the arc, 4 for 4 on three-pointers and 1 for 1 from the free-throw line. He also grabbed 2 defensive rebounds, had 1 steal and drew 3 fouls, in addition to having a +18 in the plus-minus column, the second-best total of any Maccabi player.<\/p>\n
Tyrique Jones had a strong showing on his Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade debut after recording a 28 PIR, the second-highest total in Round 1, but it came in an 88-82 defeat at Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz. The American center put up 22 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 steals. Sharing third place are AS Monaco\u2019s Alpha Diallo and Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul’s Wade Baldwin, who each had a 26 PIR. In Monaco\u2019s 93-80 triumph against EA7 Emporio Armani Milan, Diallo had a solid all-around performance with 20 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. Baldwin led Fenerbahce in an 82-71 win over Olympiacos Piraeus with 19 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds and 2 steals. Rounding out the list of top performers is Maccabi’s Jasiel Rivero with a 24 PIR as he collected 11 point, 9 rebounds, 3 steals, 2 blocks and 2 assists.<\/p>\n
Individual highs<\/strong>: Donta Hall, Baskonia, 4 blocks ALBA Berlin\u2019s Khalifa Koumadje pulled down a round-high 13 rebounds in Round 1.<\/p>\n Blatt dished 12 assists in this round, more than anyone else.<\/p>\n Six players recorded 3 steals in Round 1: Maccabi\u2019s Rivero, Xavier Rathan-Mayes of Real Madrid, Nicolas Laprovittola of FC Barcelona, TJ Shorts of Paris Basketball, Elie Okobo of Monaco and Mouhamet Diouf of Virtus Segafredo Bologna.<\/p>\n Donta Hall of Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz had 4 blocks in Round 1, the most of any player.<\/p>\n The two double-doubles in Round 1 belong to Blatt (21 points, 12 assists) and Johannes Voigtmann (19 points, 10 rebounds).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv’s Tamir Blatt was awarded MVP of the First Round of EuroLeague 2024-2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":407360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-407361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2024\/10\/35fdedb5-08ae-4c17-9a90-e0f842cac422.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407361"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=407361"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=407361"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=407361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nShabazz Napier of FC Bayern Munich was the top scorer in Round 1 with 25 points.<\/p>\n