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| A Quarter with Kyle Hines: Mike James opens the new season in style |
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WATCH FULL EPISODE HERE.
LISTEN THE PODCAST AT Spotify, Audiboom, PodFollow and Apple.
The fifth season of A Quarter with Kyle Hines is here as AS Monaco star Mike James becomes the latest Turkish Airlines EuroLeague player to sit down with the EA7 Emporio Armani Milan center. During a half-hour conversation, James opens up to his ex-CSKA Moscow teammate about his first few years at Monaco, his rise to becoming a bona fide EuroLeague legend, and his role as a veteran in the locker room, as well as much more.
Now in his third year at Monaco, James believes that despite his team coming up short in the EuroLeague Semifinals last season, the squad will be better for it.
"We brought back most of the guys [from last year] and we bring in a person who won last year with [Real] Madrid, so just having more experience and having people who have been there," the Monaco star says. "And when you go there, you're not wide-eyed; you're ready for the moment. [I'm] just excited to see what we can do this year."
James is yet to secure the EuroLeague trophy, and the 10-season veteran admits that getting his hands on it would mean a lot to him.
"Winning the EuroLeague would be big for me," James comments. "I would love it. And just, you know, give me a little bit more stuff to talk to people on Twitter [about], basically."
Monaco has created plenty of noise since its arrival in the EuroLeague in the 2021-22 season, but James believes that the club will continue to go from strength to strength in the coming years.
"I think they're taking steps," he explains. "I think it's hard to take leaps and bounds. And I think that sometimes, as players, we want an organization to grow leaps and bounds in three days, but I think it's unreasonable to ask for that. I think they're taking steps every year; they do two or three things to improve every year and then keep it going. I think they're gonna keep doing that for the rest of their existence."
In fact, expectation levels have changed since James first landed at Monaco early in the 2021-22 campaign, yet he is a fan of the way in which teams bring their A-game when the principality side comes to town.
"Now, it's like people actually have us going to the Final Four, have us winning games, have us being the favorite in a certain number of games," the current EuroLeague scoring leader says. "So it's kind of like, at first I was hunting everybody and now I'm kind of the hunted again, which is fun."
When James first entered the EuroLeague back in the 2014-15 campaign with Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, he was more of a role player. Nine years on, he is a strong candidate each year to become the EuroLeague MVP, about the only award he has yet to win. But it was a gradual process to get to this level.
"I wasn't a superstar right away," James notes. "I learned how to be a role player and got better and became a star."
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