After averaging the most points this decade by any player qualified to win the scoring title, Nando De Colo has earned the Alphonso Ford Top Scorer Trophy for the 2015-16 Euroleague.
The Ford Trophy is awarded annually to the Euroleague player with the most points averaged over a minimum number of games. It is the Euroleague’s only end-of-season award that does not rely on voting by fans, media or coaches, but is based solely on statistics. De Colo averaged 18.92 points over 25 games this season to win the award by a healthy margin. De Colo scored in double digits in all but one of those 25 contests. He also reached the 20-point mark nine times and was one of only three players to score 30 or more points in a game this season, too. De Colo’s scoring average is the third highest since the award was introduced in 2004 and the highest for a Ford Trophy winner since Marc Salyers recorded 21.8 points per game in 14 appearances for Chorale Roanne of France in the 2007-08 campaign. De Colo becomes only the third player in the award’s history to also lead his team to the Euroleague Final Four that same season.
CSKA teammate Milos Teodosic was second in this season’s scoring race with 16.3 points per game, followed by Alexey Shved (15.92 ppg.) of Khimki Moscow Region and Malcolm Delaney (15.76 ppg.) of Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar.
De Colo is the tenth different Ford Trophy winner in the 12 years since the award’s inception. The first nine were: Igor Rakocevic, who is the award’s only three-time winner (2007, 2009, 2011); Taylor Rochestie of Nizhny Novgorod (2015); Keith Langford of EA7 Emporio Armani Milan (2014); Bobby Brown (2013) and Bo McCalebb (2012), both of Montepaschi Siena; Linas Kleiza of Olympiacos Piraeus (2010); Salyers; Drew Nicholas of Benetton Treviso (2006); and Charles Smith of Scavolini Pesaro (2005).
The trophy is named in memory of Alphonso Ford, who died of leukemia in September 2004 after a brilliant career in which he was the competition’s leading scorer twice, in 2000-01 and 2001-02, both seasons with Olympiacos. He subsequently led Siena in scoring as it reached the 2003 Final Four. The Ford Trophy is the first in a series of Euroleague end-of-season honors. Other awards to be announced shortly include the Euroleague Best Defender, the Euroleague Rising Star and the All-Euroleague honorees. The MVP award will be announced at the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 12 during the Final Four in Berlin. The Alexander Gomelskiy Coach of the Year Trophy and the Euroleague Club Executive of the Year are post-season awards.
