In the 14 years since the EuroLeague MVP award has been officially awarded only one player has won it twice: Anthony Parker won it in the first two seasons. He played for Maccabi, won the EuroLeague twice and moved on to the NBA to play in Toronto and Cleveland. Parker was the first and only American player to have won the trophy. It may seem like an anomaly – indeed it is – but it is also reality. Basketball has always been an American-dominated sport, even in Europe, but in the EuroLeague, after Parker, no Americans has received such an honor. 12 players won the trophy once. Almost all the great European basketball stars have won the trophy, for example Dimitris Diamantidis, Milos Teodosic, Sergio Rodriguez, Vassilis Spanoulis, Nando De Colo, Sergio Llull up to Luka Doncic last year. But nobody did it twice. To understand how exclusive the prize is: Rudy Fernandez, Andres Nocioni, Nick Calathes never won it, Alexey Shved, Toko Shengelia, Georgios Printezis, Ante Tomic and Jan Vesely never won it. Could this be won this year, Mike James? He would be the first MVP of an Italian team, the first American MVP after Anthony Parker, the smallest MVP in history. There are candidates of great relevance and legitimacy, especially Nando De Colo and Jan Vesely, perhaps Anthony Randolph of Real Madrid or Will Clyburn of CSKA. But Mike James is a legitimate candidate himself at the end of the best season of his career. Why does he deserve the trophy?

Consistency: Mike James never had a really bad game. He has always scored in double figures, he has almost always dished at least five assists and has done so producing a season of over 1,000 minutes of playing time, a massive use determined in part by his performance and partly by the absences of Nemanja Nedovic which forced him into some kind of overwork.

Stats: Mike James is in the hunt to win two of the most important individual crowns, points scored and rating. The latter is a “big men” statistic because it rewards big numbers and punishes errors. The big men score, grab rebounds and miss only a few shots. The best in the index rating stat is rarely a small player. James could be. He will finish second in the assists after the greatest specialist of the last few seasons, his former teammate Calathes. He will finish in the top 10, perhaps in the top five, in steals. He set a personal record of points in a game with 31 and he did it against Fenerbahce. He scored 20 points in a quarter to Fenerbahce’s defense and distributed 12 assists against CSKA’s. The 12 assists are a personal and Olimpia record. The fouls drawn, the free throws secured are another indication of danger or of the problems encountered by the defenses in containing him. Clutch Game: Mike James scored the winning three against Efes, the winning free throws against Khimki, he made the final free throws in Moscow against Khimki again, he made the step-back that decided the game with Maccabi. He scored 6.29 points per game in the fourth quarter. Nobody affects the outcome of a game more than him.

Durability: his playing time may have inflated some numbers in absolute terms, but may have tainted his shooting percentages. But Mike James managed to mix the final performance with the high usage. In this he is a special player, very rare. The EuroLeague record of minutes in a season belongs to Brad Wanamaker with 1.138 when he played at Darussafaka, but including the playoffs.

Difficulty: compared to the other MVP candidates, Mike James had the most difficult season, in the sense that none of the others were ever subjected to the defensive attentions to which MJ was subjected. The other candidates belong to top-of-the-range teams. They have been supported, and in some cases replaced, by very high-caliber players. James has always been the first “goal” of every defense and even more so in games where there was no Nedovic. At that time, between Nedovic and the arrival of James Nunnally, James fought against defensive walls. He decided to play in Milan because he wanted to be in the forefront of a team with great long-term aspirations. The choice to be exposed was his. The way in which he responded to the expectations was spectacular. In many ways, his season is a historic one. It would be fair to reward it with the MVP award.