Thursday’s match against Armani Milano at OAKA left some solid data:

1. Panathinaikos scored their fourth consecutive win and moved up to 6-6 and began flirting with the top eight in the rankings.
2. Dwayne Bacon belongs to the elite of EuroLeague players and – whatever the mentality – he is the one who first improved the psyche and, at least at this stage of the year, the fate of the shamrock.
3. The Greens got the desired result because they improved their reaction to the defensive rebound in the second half while still having 80% shot.
4. They also had a stroke of luck as Luau-Cambaro lost what Virtus Bologna’s Zaite had lost 20 days earlier.

And if on the one hand Panathinaikos turned out to be the survivor of a long-lost battle, while on the other hand Bacon wore the Batman cap, Dejan Radonić has additional reason to smile broadly at the court about what happened.

Certainly the total of ten assists in a 45-minute game is very little. They were at least compensated by the eleven mistakes made by his players. Also, the fact that Panathinaikos relied so much on the individual quality of their material – rather than a team effort – leaves open questions about the evenings when nothing will be the same.

Behind this great result, however, lies an opponent who was built to be a star and is suffering two main axes of operation That created the necessary conditions for an upset, and together allowed Bacon’s usage of 34.5% (a scale measuring the percentage of attacks made by a player) to achieve an unreal 64% efficiency from isolation situations and unmask anyone who tried to stop.

The best Lee of the year

One understands that a parameter affects him Paris Lee, who has been forced to shoulder a greater burden than his due by sharing time and responsibility with Nate Walters. The blonde American’s absence was evident as the Greens failed to find distance and partnership, causing the attack to struggle.

His compatriot entered the second half of the game with a fresh attitude and managed to give full support to the overall effort made to break the Italians’ double-digit deficit.

The 22 points from 3/7 2-pointers, 2/7 3-pointers and 10/11 shooting were clearly hugely beneficial to the development of the game. But the most important thing was that the little American with 26.6% usage was responsible for Panathinaikos’ total of 34 points!

Lee dished out 5 assists and from those, Clover gained 12 points, resulting in a total that surpassed every other Radonich player (Bacon’s 33) and the match.

The 27-year-old ace has never had such an individual performance, with 24 points against Baskonia and Virtus Bologna being his best. However, his own assist points were under 7 per game in the EuroLeague, not an ideal performance for a point guard.

Now Lee is at 7.3 points and rising.

Ponitka is valuable in defense and attack

The second most invisible protagonist of green dominance was the Mateus Ponitka. The Pole shows he’s comfortable alongside Bacon because he does what he can very well and avoids the excesses he was forced into in the first two months of the season because offensively caught Panathinaikos in search of heroes was.

It is no coincidence that in the presence of Ponitkas, the Greek team showed the best net rating (point difference reduced to 100 possessions) in the game, beating Armani with a difference of 36.7 points (119-82.3).

Admittedly, it helped that he played more than 30 minutes and was present in most overtime. But also Williams, Lee or Bacon, who were below +25. Not bad by any means, but a far cry from Ponitka’s performance.

The effectiveness of Papagiannis

The only one to move above +30 was George Papagiannis (+31.5, 109.4-78 in 100 possessions). It is here that the Megaritis center deserves a special mention, as he was Panathinaikos’ most “thrifty” player, despite the lowest usage (7.1%) he showed in that game.

Apparently seven personal points are few. However, he was the player to score 1.75p per possession who took it upon himself to get the shot after being down for almost 28 minutes as second Bacon 1.19p and Lee 1.06 Pence had, but also the one who helped with good screens got another 5 Clover points.