The 6th round of Euroleague regular season 2017-18 is done and DunkStories is presenting to you the most worth remembering moments. Without further delay, let’s take a closer glance at the big winners and losers of this week:

The Good:

This week, there are simply too many candidates for this category. My initial intention was to stick with Zalgiris Kaunas and its emphatic win in Milan against Armani (62-94). Sarunas Jasikevicius is doing a great job and it will be very interesting to see how far Zalgiris can go this season. However, the game, and by extension, the win of the week took place in Piraeus. Olympiakos against Panathinaikos in one of the greatest rivalries of European basketball. The ‘Greens’ managed to escape from the Peace and Friendship stadium with a great result (62-70). This was the third consecutive win of Panathinaikos who starts to feel very comfortable in Piraeus lately. Luka Lekavicius (14 pts.), James Gist (15 pts., 6 rbs.) and K.C. Rivers (12 pts., 5 rbs.) were the leading stars for Panathinaikos last night. As far as Olympiakos is concerned, Janis Strelnieks (18 pts) did a great game but it wasn’t enough.

This result can potentially be a game-changer for both teams. On the one side, it was an amazing boost of confidence for Xavi Pasqual and his players, especially after the painful losses against Baskonia and AEK. On the other side, Olympiakos is looking forward to Spanoulis return in order to add more aspects in its game. In any case, Ioannis Sfairopoulos doesn’t feel that safe anymore.

The Bad:

At the moment, Barcelona is probably one of the most unstable basketball teams in the world in terms of performance. Last week, destroyed Olympiakos with +22 points (73-51) and this week couldn’t handle Anadolou Efes which was still without a win before this game. The Turkish team managed to grab a great victory (85-89) in Palau Blaugrana and seemed ready to make the big comeback in Euroleague. Both Ricky Ledo and Errick Mccolum scored 21 points and together with Vladimir Stimac (22 pts., 8 rbs.) paved the path for Efes win. Au contraire, Barcelona had great defensive problems and showed that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before they can dream their participation to this year’s final four in Belgrade. Kevin Seraphin (19 pts.) and Victor Claver (12 pts.) were the best players for the Blaugrana.

The Ugly:

Despite the great start in the game against CSKA Moscow, Valencia was one of the biggest disappointments this week in Euroleague. The final result (94-67) doesn’t leave room for many analyses. Nando De Colo (23 pts.) and Cory Higgins (16 pts., 3 as.) were fascinating and played a significant role in this convincing victory against Valencia. Tibor Pleiss (12 pts., 7 rbs.) and Fernando San Emeterio (11 pts., 4 rbs.) were the most dangerous players on behalf of the Spanish but they couldn’t make a difference at the end of the day. One of the keys for this CSKA victory was the way Dimitris Itoudis and his players defended against Erick Green. Valencia’s big scorer had only 8 points (3/10 2FG, 0/1 3FG) in 23:31. Like that, CSKA Moscow reached to 5-1 and together with Khimki is leading the Turkish Airlines Euroleague after the first six rounds of the 2017-18 regular season.

And the MVP:

Vladimir Stimac was the Round 6 MVP after his great performance in Barcelona last Thursday. Stimac had a career-high performance index rating of 29 to lift Efes to its first win. He also matched his career-best by scoring 22 points. On top of that, Stimac had 8 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 block in 29 minutes.

That’s all folks! The round 6 is over but before we go here are the top 10 plays of the week:

Featured image: Gazzetta.gr