MIES (Switzerland) - The ninth season of the Basketball Champions League tipped off with a bang, and there were plenty of highlights on a seven-game Wednesday evening across the continent. This is what we learned last night.
King of Szombathely
Have you ever heard of Jean-Marc Bosman? The lefty French point guard? Won the FIBA European Cup with Limoges CSP? Scored the buzzer beater for the championship from his own half, with his back to the rim, over five defenders, just an incredible shot, one of the best in the history of all shots?
Actually, that's all made up. Jean-Marc Bosman wasn't even a basketball player, and yet, he's extremely important for this story.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bosman was a professional soccer player, and when his transfer from Belgium to France fell through, he started a long trial, suing his club, his domestic federation and UEFA. Finally, in 1995, he won the case, and the European Court of Justice subsequently allowed European players to move across European clubs easily.
That ruling changed the sports dramatically, and with clubs being capable of bringing in players from other countries, the number of hometown heroes decreased to a bare minimum. That's why it feels special when you see a local guy being the idol of his club's fans nowadays.
Enter stage, Mr Zoltan Perl. Born in Szombathely 29 years ago, at 195cm (6ft 5in) with a strong body and elite ball handling, young Zoltan caught the attention of clubs abroad, playing in Italy and Spain before going all 'you know what, this ain't fun' in 2019 and coming back home.
Since 2019, he has been easily the best player of the Hungarian champions, easily, by a mile, and he has also been the best player nobody talks about in all of Europe.
On Wednesday, he welcomed WKS Slask Wroclaw to the Basketball Champions League with a 29-piece puzzle, accomplished in typical Perl fashion, as he hit 11 two-pointers and attempted just three three-pointers, two of which dropped in.
Perl also had 7 rebounds and 2 assists, and made the last second three-pointer to push Falco's lead to 9 points at the end of the game, which could prove crucial in case of a potential tie at the end of the Regular Season.
And then, business as usual, he went to celebrate with his brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, neighbors and friends for life, also known as the Falco-Vulcano Szombathely fans, who made the seven-hour drive from their hometown to Wroclaw, Poland.
With 551 career points in the BCL, Perl is now the all-time leading scorer off the bench in this competition, overtaking AEK's legendary captain Dusan Sakota (533).
That Bosman dude changed all sports and kind of made them what they are today. And at the same time, he also made stories like Zoltan Perl's completely unique and 100 percent romantic.
Triple-double Tommy
On a similar note of players you weren't warned about, have you heard of Tommy Kuhse? The 188cm (6ft 2in) tall point guard of Bertram Derthona Basket? Well, you should've, because Tommy is awesome.
Kuhse needed just one game for us to put him on the triple-double watch in the BCL: He registered 22 points, 9 rebounds and 2 assists in Derthona's 87-81 win over NINERS Chemnitz on Wednesday.
Wait, what? We're putting a guy with 2 assists on triple-double watch!? Who writes these pieces, come on, what is this???
Yeah, anyway. Tommy is a pass-first point guard with elite vision and he developed a habit of dishing out 9+ assists per game with RASTA Vechta in the German Bundesliga last season. Oh, and he had a 13-7-7 line in his first game in the Italian Serie A this season.
The 9 rebounds he had on Wednesday suggest he could get into double digits in that department, which opens up the doors for the fourth triple-double in BCL history (C. Kramer 2017, A. Butkevicius 2017, E. Fridriksson 2023). It's just that Chemnitz have had this game plan of making him a scorer, not a passer in all their matchups last season and this one, too.
That masterplan is kinda working, because they won three games against Kuhse. But they also lost three, so that's 'kinda.'
And Tommy doesn't mind being the scorer, at all. Across those six games against Chemnitz, he had 22, 21, 18, 16, 18 and 22 points. Not bad for a pass-first guard, right? Right.
Quick notes on the Wednesday games
Milan Barbitch (Nanterre 92) became the sixth player in competition history to post a points-assists double-double in his first BCL game, finishing with 13 points and 11 assists against Igokea m:tel.
Desi Rodriguez (Nanterre 92) had his first BCL career double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, in what was his 10th BCL game.
For the first time in their 36 appearances in this competition, Igokea m:tel had five players in double figures (Sacar Anim, Bryce Jones, Dragan Milosavljevic, Borisa Simanic, Terrell Carter).
Fran Guerra (La Laguna Tenerife) set his new BCL career-high with 20 points against Karsiyaka. This was his 73rd game in this competition.
Isaiah Whitehead (WKS Slask Wroclaw) set his new BCL career-high with 25 points. This was his 14th game in this competition.
Ismael Kamagate (Bertram Derthona Basket) and Reggie Lynch (WKS Slask Wroclaw) blocked five shots each in their BCL debuts, becoming the fourth and fifth players to do so, but not the first ones to do so this season because Mouhamed Faye (Pallacanestro Reggiana) pulled it off on Tuesday.