Mario Hezonja, winner of the Endesa League MVP

Mario Hezonja, Real Madrid’s Croatian forward, has been chosen as the best player of the season in the Endesa League ahead of the Dominican Jean Montero (Valencia Basket) and the American David DeJulius (UCAM Murcia) thanks to the vote of players, coaches, media and fans.

Hezonja, who with his team has won the regular phase with a record of 26-8, was the favorite by the 18 captains of the competition and the media representatives and the second in the votes of the coaches of all the teams and the fans. In total he accumulated 103.5 points while Montero finished with 74.5 and DeJulius with 73.3.

The recognition for the Balkan comes after a campaign in which he has been the best player of the day three times. The first was in the ‘Clásico’ on matchday 14 against Barça, his former team, in which he had a 30-digit rating. The second in the 20th against Unicaja, where he scored 35 points in that section. And the third in the 29th against UCAM Murcia.

In this last one Hezonja sealed a performance for history, being the first player in the acb to accumulate more than fifty in rating having played less than half an hour. Specifically He went up to 53 with 40 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists in a clash that ended with a 131 to 123 victory.

This milestone allowed him to complete the best individual performance in the league by a white team player in the 21st century and join the select list of men who in that period surpassed fifty rating points in a match made up of Luis Scola, Pete Mickeal and Sylven Landesberg.

He has also been the third with the most points on average in the tournament (17.5) behind Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot (18.7) and from DeJulius (17.8). A statistic in which he has stood out, as has happened in triples (eighth, with 36.6% success rate); in free throws (ninth with the best percentage at 89.5%); in the Plus/Minus (twelfth with +5.4); and in shots of two scored (15th with a 55.6% success rate).

Behind Hezonja, along with Montero and DeJulius, appear Luwawu-Cabarrot (Kosner Baskonia, 44.9 points); Luka Bozic (Coviran Granada, 43.6 points); Ricky Rubio (Asisa Joventut, 17.7 points); Marcelinho Huertas (La Laguna Tenerife, 14.7 points); Gonzalo Corbalán (Recoletas Salud San Pablo Burgos, 7.7 points); and Jaime Pradilla (Valencia Basket), Santi Yusta (Casademont Zaragoza) and Trent Forrest (Kosner Baskonia), the latter three with five points each.

The election was carried out by voting by the captains and coaches of all the teams in the competition, by 51 representatives of the media and fans through the acb app; each of them being worth 25%.