It turns out you can win the MVP award just for avoiding relegation.

Colbey Ross and his Varese team had quite the 2022/23 Italian Lega Basket A season. Despite finishing the year with a 17-13 record that would otherwise have been good enough for a spot in the playoffs, the club had to deal with a 16-point deduction handed down by the Italian Basketball Federation for what it considered to be financial improprieties. This meant that, as late as April 13th, Varese were last in the standings and playing for their LBA survival.

(For American viewers, as in soccer, standings in many European basketball leagues are determined by "points", where each team gets two points for a win. In a sport in which ties are impossible, it seems largely unnecessary. But it did serve a function here; points could be docked, and the standings adjusted, without giving teams that didn't beat them any extra wins.)

14-11 at the time of the suspension, the punishment essentially meant Varese were 6-19, and two games adrift of second-last Verona. Worse still, there were only five games left to go. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. And in this time of need, Ross stepped up, averaging 18.4 points, 7.2 rebounds and 7.8 assists per game in that span.

Across those final five games, Varese went 3-2. This, combined with the suspension being reduced to 11 points on appeal and Verona going only 1-4 across their final five games, was enough to stave off relegation. And in the penultimate game of the season, as an exclamation point, Ross made a piece of history. He recorded 33 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists in a win over Scafati, for what was only the eighth triple-double in the history of the competition.

Such a milestone may have been normalised in the NBA by the Russell Westbrook and Nikola Jokic eras. But in Italy, that is still huge news. And it capped off what had been a breakout season for the former Pepperdine star, one which culminated in him winning the league's MVP award.

Ross graduated from the Waves in 2021 after a striking if somewhat erratic four-year career in which he had averaged 17.9 points, 3.6 rebounds and 6.8 steals per game. The word "erratic" is here used to reflect that the 6'1, 180lbs point guard also coughed up an average of 3.9 turnovers per game in that time, including more than four a contest in both his sophomore and junior seasons, ranking sixth and fifth in the nation respectively.

Nevertheless, mistakes as a by-product of an enormous usage rate and relentless aggression are far more palatable than turnovers born out of carelessness. And as a scorer, Ross is a tour de force of selective, head-turning aggression.

A scorer who is always switched on, Ross is an excellent pull-up shooter, who creates the space needed with the handle and a quick stop. He is small in stature and not an above-the-rim athlete, but there is a quickness to everything he does, and it allows him to get to his spots, float over the defence, pull up beyond the first line, or just raise over the top of everybody.

A lot of players can say they have a scoring bag, but Ross has proven it at every level he has played at so far. This includes the fringes of the NBA, as he has now played in summer league in all three seasons of his professional career; first in 2021 with the Golden State Warriors, then in 2022 with the Portland Trail Blazers, and then earlier this month with the Utah Jazz. His scoring average across the three stints has steadily risen, from 1.5 points per game initially, to 6.5 with Portland, to 10.4 this time. With each passing year, he gets more confident, more comfortable, and more senior.

Always probing, Ross is a pressure-applier around whom the opponent's game plan is based. At each step of his career thus far, he better finds the balance between when to go and when to reset, when to drive and when to pass, when to pull up and when to dish, and the overdribbling problem of his youth has been curtailed. A dynamo in transition, Ross also brings defensive energy, playing smartly rather than excessively gambling and being a key part of the point-of-attack game plan on that end as well.

All this is to say, do not be surprised to see Colbey Ross in the NBA one day. He has already outgrown Italy, and now moves on to Adriatic League mainstay Buducnost, where yet more huge production may see him get the full NBA contract he has long been knocking on the door of.

From a physical point of view, Ross has the limited size and burst that will not star in the NBA without an impeccable floor game of someone like Chris Paul. But through his touch, his skill, his quickness and his sheer force of will, he seems likely to make the back end of a rotation some day soon.