Dorsey Leads, Mantzoukas Chases: The EuroLeague Three-Point Race After Three Rounds

After three rounds of the EuroLeague, the three-point statistics produce a number that forces you to stop: Tyler Dorsey has made 11 of 22 attempts, good for 50%. Right behind him stands Lefteris Mantzoukas at 9/16, or 56.25%. Exactly two made shots separate them. The media quickly labeled it a two-man duel between two Greek names. But when I reopened the full dataset after Round 3, the story was not as tidy as the headlines. Numbers stay silent, but the story never does.

Context: a new season, three rounds in

The EuroLeague has just closed Round 3, and teams are preparing for Round 4 — which features the most anticipated fixture: the Greek–Turkish basketball festival. Olympiacos and Panathinaikos, the two giants of Greek basketball, meet Turkish representatives in turn. These are the games where every statistic gets tested under physical pressure and a hostile atmosphere, and also the games people most often misread.

Based on my experience watching games across many EuroLeague seasons, I have drawn a fairly stable rule: the first three rounds almost always produce “statistical stars” who vanish from the leaderboard by Round 10. There is nothing strange about that. The sample is simply too small. A EuroLeague season runs 34 regular-season rounds, and for a three-point percentage to stabilize, a player needs hundreds of attempts. The numbers under discussion here range from 7 to 27 attempts. My faith does not rest on luck; it rests on the large denominator.

One technical detail rarely mentioned: the EuroLeague three-point line sits at FIBA distance, about 6.75 metres at the arc — shorter than the NBA line (about 7.24 metres). Structurally, this pushes European three-point percentages higher than the NBA environment, and partly explains why several players clear 55% early in the season. But I must say this right away: the decisive factor here is not the line, it is the variance of three games. The line explains a small part; sample size explains nearly all the rest.

The data core: the real leaderboard is wider than two names

When I rebuilt the three-point leaderboard after Round 3, the picture broke into three distinct tiers, not a two-man duel.

The high-volume tier — players who shoot a lot and stay efficient — includes Dorsey (11/22, 50%), AJ Lawson of Baskonia (10/21, 47.62%), then two cold cases: Derrick Alston of Virtus Bologna (7/24, 29.17%) and Vasilije Micić of Hapoel Tel Aviv (6/27, 22.22%). Micić leads the league in attempts with 27, but made only 6. Alston took 24, made 7.

The medium-volume tier — steady, efficient shooters — includes Mantzoukas (9/16, 56.25%), Connor Morgan of Beşiktaş (8/14, 57.14%) and Sterling Brown of Žalgiris Kaunas (8/12, 66.67%).

The low-volume tier — small samples with eye-catching percentages — includes Zach LeDay of Hapoel Tel Aviv (5/7, 71.43%) and Marcus Bingham of Fenerbahçe (6/9, 66.67%).

The key point: Dorsey is the only player combining both elements — leading the league in made threes (11) while holding strong efficiency (50%) on the largest meaningful volume (22 attempts). In this three-game window, he is the most statistically complete three-point shooter. Mantzoukas is genuinely impressive on efficiency, but he ranks third in made threes, not second. The two-man duel headline reaches a bit too far beyond the data.

And the most interesting thing the table reveals sits with the two cold names. Micić and Alston are high-volume but currently inefficient — the signature of cold starts from players with big roles. Statistically, their chance of bouncing back in the coming rounds is far higher than the chance Dorsey or Mantzoukas hold their current rates. Attention is landing in the wrong place: people stare at the peak of a mountain built from three games, while the real signal lies at the base.

More notably, several names near the top are former NBA players — Dorsey, Micić, Sterling Brown, Lawson. All are high-volume shooters whose roles transferred directly into the EuroLeague's spacing systems. Hapoel Tel Aviv appearing twice in the leading group (Micić and LeDay) is also an early-season storyline the original article left untouched.

Mantzoukas's real story, to me, is not that he is the league's best shooter. He ranks third in made threes, and four other players are shooting at a higher percentage than he is. His real story is role expansion. A player described as Panathinaikos's “surprise of the season” means that previously he played a bench role or was limited in minutes. A simultaneous jump in both role and efficiency is usually a sign of an inflection point — perhaps a contract year, perhaps trust from the coaching staff. His own words, that he always believed he could reach this level, are a positive psychological signal, even if they are not a statistical one.

The contrarian angle: three games prove nothing

This is the part I want to spend the most time on, because it is what the original article does not emphasize: three games is a negligible sample for shooting percentages.

Try a simple calculation. Suppose a shooter's true probability is 38% — a decent EuroLeague average. Over 16 attempts, the probability he makes 9 or more is entirely plausible, not rare at all. In other words, Mantzoukas making 9/16 does not prove he is a 56% shooter. It only proves he went through a good 16-attempt stretch. Every system cracks if you look long enough, and here the crack is the sample size.

There is one more blind spot. Mantzoukas has played all his games so far at OAKA — Panathinaikos's home floor. His sample is a pure home sample. That factor can inflate the number, and the original article flags no warning for the asymmetry. I am not saying Mantzoukas is not good. I am saying we do not yet have enough data to know who he is once he steps outside OAKA.

The gap between Mantzoukas's 56.25% and Dorsey's 50% is statistically meaningless on these volumes. The meaningful difference is Dorsey's superior volume paired with elite efficiency. If I had to rank the reliability of these data lines, Dorsey is first, Mantzoukas second, and the low-volume group like LeDay and Bingham last — not because they shoot poorly, but because we know almost nothing about them from 7 or 9 attempts.

On Dorsey, I rate this as the most robust line in the set. He is an established perimeter shooter who has played in the NBA and the EuroLeague, now in the prime of his career. His high volume is not random — it reflects a clearly defined offensive role, and roles last longer than percentages. That is the only thing that truly transfers to the playoffs: shot quality and role, not the percentage figure. I do not guess, I count. And what I count is that Dorsey's volume is the trustworthy part.

I also want to address how the story was chosen. A headline naming Dorsey and Mantzoukas is the product of a narrative selection — the writer elevates two names he finds compelling, while the underlying data holds shooters who are equally or more efficient. This is media narrative bias, not a data finding. It is not wrong as entertainment, but it easily leads readers to confuse an appealing story with a statistical conclusion.

The biggest risk here is interpretive, not competitive. No contract is threatened, no injury is forecast, no disciplinary issue appears. The entire content is positive. But precisely for that reason it invites misreading: a three-game stat table looks like a trend when it is only a slice. Regression to the mean is the strongest law in shooting data, and it will make no exception for anyone on this board.

The signal to watch in Round 4

Round 4 opens with the Greek–Turkish festival. This is a better test than the first three rounds, because it pushes shooters under high physical pressure and a hostile atmosphere — where one cold night can reverse the race narrative within 40 minutes.

What I will watch is not who leads, but whether Micić's volume stays as high as it is now, and whether Mantzoukas holds his rate once he steps outside OAKA. If Micić bounces back as the data suggests, and Mantzoukas cools on the road, then the three-point race the media is painting will dissolve before the season is a third of the way through. Crisis is not the enemy. It is only data misread from the start — and here, the mistake lies in reading a three-game stretch as if it were a trend.