During the summer of 2014 when he moved from Omegna to Rhodes, Mike James spent a part of his spare time in Seattle, playing in a summer league organized by the NBA player Jamal Crawford. James was the star of Pop Chips Pilots, Portland’s first team to play in the Seattle’s Pro-Am Tournament. Along him there was Nik Raivio, a shooter from the University of Portland, and lately in Legnano. James quickly became one of the great attractions of the League, even challenging Crawford. It was Jamal Crawford who declared publicly that James should have been an NBA player (James holds the record of points in a single game of the competition with 67).

He didn’t go to the NBA, James went instead to Rhodes and after Rhodes, Vitoria and the EuroLeague called. He arrived in Spain just in time to play the Top 16 phase averaging 11.1 points per game, with nine games out of 14 in double figures and a personal best of 19 points scored twice against CSKA Moscow and Fenerbahce. The following summer he found himself with the Phoenix summer team, next to then rookie Devin Booker from Kentucky, now the face of the Suns’ franchise. “I did not know who he was, I wondered why he was not in the NBA,” Booker told to the Arizona Republic. At the beginning of the Las Vegas summer league, he did not really receive much playing time. But gradually he emerged and scored 32 points against San Antonio in the final game.

The following year, James returned to Vitoria, leading the team to the Final Four after eliminating Panathinaikos Athens in the quarterfinals (he scored 20 points in the decisive road win). MJ scored 27 points at Real Madrid, a career high, he averaged 14.7 points per game in the playoffs and dished five assists against Fenerbahce in his team defeat in the semifinal game. It was 2016 and the next stop was Panathinaikos. The big climb from the Grant High School in Portland to a minor college, to a mid-minor college to the European minor league and finally to the biggest stage had finally been completed. In two years in Athens, James has twice won the Greek title (he was decisive in game 5 of 2018 against Olympiacos) and once the Greek Cup. Twice his return to the Final Four was interrupted in the quarterfinals but always against the team that eventually won the title. It was Fenerbahce in 2017 and Real Madrid in 2018. But there was also a short but exciting experience in the NBA.

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