Carlik Jones sparked the kind of opening night Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade fans had not experienced in nearly two decades, leading the club to an emphatic 92-76 home win over Armani Olimpia Milan. His all-around performance earned him MVP of the Round honors for Round 1 of the 2026-27 EuroLeague season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jones scored 20 points on 2-of-5 shooting inside the arc, 4-of-6 from three-point range and a perfect 4-of-4 from the free-throw line. He also handed out a club-record 10 assists, tying his career high, without committing a single turnover. Add 4 rebounds and 5 fouls drawn, and Jones finished with a PIR of 33, the best of any player in the opening round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The win carried extra weight for Partizan. It ended a run of 10 consecutive opening-round losses and gave the club a winning start to its EuroLeague campaign for the first time in 19 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dan Oturu of Hapoel IBI Tel Aviv posted the round’s next-best PIR of 32, though it came in an 84-86 home loss to FC Bayern Munich. The Hapoel big man had 20 points on 10-of-11 two-point shooting, plus 12 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dwayne Bacon followed with a PIR of 31, collecting 24 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists to lift Dubai Basketball past Real Madrid in a thrilling 78-77 finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rounding out the top performers were a pair of Olympiacos Piraeus stars, Sasha Vezenkov and Tyler Dorsey, who helped the Reds open their title defense with an 89-106 road victory over Kosner Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz. Vezenkov registered a PIR of 30 with 22 points and 5 rebounds, while Dorsey scored 25 points for a PIR of 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TJ Shorts of Valencia Basket led all scorers in Round 1 with 26 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oturu and Zalgiris Kaunas forward Azuolas Tubelis shared the rebounding lead with 12 boards apiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jones was the only player to reach double digits in assists in the opening round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His Partizan teammate Luca Vildoza and Baskonia forward Rodions Kurucs tied for the steals lead with 4 each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four players blocked 3 shots in Round 1: Jonas Valanciunas of Zalgiris, Nicolo Melli of Fenerbahce Tarfin Istanbul, and the Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens duo of Mathias Lessort and Lefteris Mantoukas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, four players opened their seasons with double-doubles: Jones (20 points, 10 assists), Oturu (20 points, 12 rebounds), Tubelis (10 points, 12 rebounds) and Fenerbahce’s Braxton Key (11 points, 10 rebounds).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carlik Jones sparked the kind of opening night Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade fans had not experienced in nearly two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":534677,"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":[15727],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-534679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague","typology-press-release-en"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/09\/98e1083e-6b3f-4990-b69b-7070ee0bf8e0.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534679","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=534679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534680,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534679\/revisions\/534680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534679"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=534679"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=534679"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=534679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}