The EuroLeague's best offense went shopping for a 9%-usage guard. The data says that is exactly the point.
Olympiacos have the best offense in the EuroLeague. Through six rounds they have the second best offense (offensive rating 124.8) and the league’s best true shooting. So when the Reds went to the NBA for a signing, you might have expected a scorer.
They brought in John Konchar instead. He is a 30-year-old guard who averaged 4.4 points in 19.9 minutes for Memphis and Utah last season. While on court he used just 9.4% of his team’s possessions, a lower usage than any EuroLeague guard or forward with 400+ minutes last season.
That is not a contradiction. It is the point. Olympiacos did not need another player to finish possessions. They needed someone to end the other team’s possessions and to connect their own. This summer, they lost the players who did that.
The NBA’s quiet connector
John Konchar · Photo: Basketnews.com
Across four NBA seasons in our data, our archetype model has classified Konchar the same way every year: a Glue guy. That means low usage, quick ball movement, value off the ball, and above-average defense. In 2025-26 he also scored highly as a Pace pusher and an Off-ball threat.
Konchar’s archetype fit scores, NBA 2025-26 (Memphis/Utah, 56 games). Glue guy was his top archetype in all four NBA seasons we track.
In numbers, the profile is unusual. We placed his per-possession rates against every EuroLeague 2025-26 guard and forward with 400+ minutes (157 players). Here is where he would rank:
Steals: 3.27 per 100 possessions, 99th percentile.
Blocks: 99th percentile.
Assist-to-turnover: 3.5, 97th percentile.
Defensive rebounds: 84th percentile.
Those are his raw NBA rates. Adjusted for the difference between the two leagues, his steal rate holds (98th–99th percentile) while his rebounding edge shrinks (to roughly the 72nd–74th).
The summer Olympiacos lost its connectors
Thomas Walkup left for Dubai, Frank Ntilikina left for Paris, and Alec Peters left for Milano. Between them they played 1,932 EuroLeague minutes for Olympiacos last season. They were the team’s point-of-attack defense and much of its connective tissue.
HoopWise’s lineup-portfolio module rates how well a roster covers each archetype across its lineups. Our coverage score combines that quality rating with depth. Here is what the summer did to Olympiacos.
Olympiacos roster coverage by archetype, 2025-26 vs. 2026-27 (EuroLeague, through six rounds). Coverage score combines the module’s quality rating with depth (0–100, full depth at 3 players). “Signing” is Konchar’s own fit score.
The departures emptied two roles. Point-of-attack defense had a coverage score of 78 last season, spread across five players. Six rounds in, no lineup qualifies. Spot-up shooting (48 last season) is at zero too, and so far no lineup qualifies as slashing either. Glue coverage halved, from 38 to 18.
Konchar fits the defensive and glue holes. He grades at 93 as a Glue guy and 64 as a Point-of-attack defender. He does not fit the shooting hole. We’ll come back to that.
What he does well, and what he doesn’t
Konchar’s NBA percentiles (comparison ranking vs NBA guards) split cleanly in two.
Konchar’s NBA 2025-26 percentiles. Higher is better; “vs guards” compares him with guards only.
The top half is defense, rebounding and decision-making. He ranks in the 98th percentile in steals, 98th in blocks among guards, and 94th in both assist-to-turnover and offensive rebounding among guards. He also grades 80th in switchability and 78th in transition efficiency.
The bottom half is the trade-off. He shot 27.5% from three last season, 20th percentile, and his catch-and-shoot offense sat in the 10th. Opponents also found him on cuts and putbacks.
A finisher, not a shooter
The shot chart makes the split visible. Here is every one of his 201 attempts from last season.
Every Konchar field-goal attempt, NBA 2025-26. Zone labels show FG% and makes/attempts, coloured by his FG% percentile against NBA guards with at least 15 attempts in the zone.
At the rim he went 46/58, or 79%. That is the 98th percentile among NBA guards, whose median is 64%. Mid-range was solid. But every three-point zone sits below the 30th percentile, and he has shot 31.9% from three over four NBA seasons. Defenses will leave him open. He makes them pay near the basket, especially on the break.
Where Olympiacos are leaking
John Konchar · Photo: © Deseret News 2025, Credit: Tess Crowley, Deseret News
Six rounds is a small sample, so we only call a weakness structural if it also showed up across all of last season. Here is where Olympiacos rank among the 20 EuroLeague teams, and where Konchar is projected to move them.
Olympiacos rank among the 20 EuroLeague teams (1 = best): 2025-26 full season (ring) vs. 2026-27 through six rounds (dot). ◆ = projected rank with Konchar playing 20 minutes a game.
The offense is not the problem. The defense is a deliberate trade-off. The scheme protects the paint, where opponents shoot 62% at the rim (#4 in the league). In exchange it concedes threes: more attempts than against any other team, in both seasons. Last season opponents missed them. This season they are hitting 45.5% from the corners.
Two weaknesses are structural and squarely in Konchar’s lane. Olympiacos force too few turnovers: they are #15 in steals now and were #13 last season. They also face the 3rd-most transition chances in the league.
our fit assessment
Put his profile next to their gaps and the match is specific. It is not a general upgrade. It is a fix for one half of the roster.
How Konchar’s profile lines up with Olympiacos’s gaps. Konchar figures are NBA 2025-26; Olympiacos ranks are EuroLeague 2026-27 through six rounds.
The left column is the defensive and connective work that left with Walkup, Ntilikina and Peters. The right column is everything a 9%-usage, non-shooting guard can’t give you. The most important line on it is spacing. Walkup and Peters took a good share of the team’s spot-up shooting with them, and Konchar doesn’t bring it back.
Konchar is the answer to the defensive half of this summer’s losses, not the shooting half. With Walkup and Peters gone, Olympiacos still need a spot-up threat around Vezenkov.
The question behind the signing
On a box score, a 4.4-point scorer is easy to dismiss. The right question was never how many points he scores. It was which holes the roster has, and whether he fills them.
That is the question HoopWise is built to answer. We map how well a roster covers each role, translate a player’s profile from one league to another, and estimate what a signing changes at team level before he plays a minute. For Olympiacos, the answer is a targeted fix: the glue they lost, with the shooting question still open.
