Shortly after helping Turkish club Anadolu Efes win a EuroLeague title, former Oklahoma State basketball star James Anderson signed a one-year contract extension with the team. The Turkish Airlines EuroLeague championship, which is contested by 24 of the top teams in Europe each year, was the first in team history for Anadolu Efes.
EuroLeague basketball is widely considered to be the second-best professional basketball competition in the world behind only the NBA.
The 32-year-old Anderson averaged 7.3 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per game for Anadolu Efes during its championship run this past season. Anadolu Efes clinched the EuroLeague title with an 86-81 win against Barcelona following an 89-86 victory against CSKA Moscow in the semifinals. It was Anderson’s third year with the team.
Former Oklahoma State basketball star James Anderson just helped his Turkish club team, Anadolu Efes, won its first-ever EuroLeague title last spring.
Anadolu Efes is team based in Istanbul, Turkey, that competes in the Turkish League in addition to the EuroLeague, the hoops equivalent to the two-league model used in European soccer. Some of Anderson’s teammates include: former University of Miami (Fla.) standout Shane Larkin, who spent five years in the NBA, former University of Texas player Doğuş Balbay, and French national Rodrigue Beaubois, who was a first-round draft pick by the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2009 before being traded to the Mavericks.
After the San Antonio Spurs drafted him in the first round of the 2010 NBA Draft, Anderson bounced around the NBA and also played with club teams in Lithuania and Russia before landing with Anadolu Efes.
Anderson spent three seasons as a Cowboy and was named the Big 12 Player of the Year in 2010. The first-team All-American averaged 22.3 points and 5.8 rebounds per game that season, which ended much too early for OSU fans as the Pokes bowed out with a first-round NCAA Tourney loss to No. 10 seed Georgia Tech.
His scoring average that year ranked as third-best in OSU school history behind only Ed Odom and Byron Houston. The native of Junction City, Arkansas also ranks as fifth all-time in points scored (1,811) in program history despite only playing three seasons in Stillwater.
The below announcement from Anadolu Efes states in Turkish that Anderson has signed a one-year extension and that he “has been sweating our jersey since the 2018-2019 season!”
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— Anadolu Efes SK (@AnadoluEfesSK) June 24, 2021
2018-2019 sezonundan bu yana formamızı terleten şampiyon oyuncumuz @JA_Five ile 1 yıllık sözleşme yeniledik!#BenimYerimBurası pic.twitter.com/uds78BrgZy
You can also catch James Anderson’s highlights on Twitter, like this acrobatic shot against French club ASVEL from March 2021 from by beIN Sports Türkiye:
https://twitter.com/ClutchPage/status/1347643734872174593
The next EuroLeague basketball season will begin on Sept. 30, 2021, with Anderson and Anadolu Efes out to defend their first title.