Jean Montero Is Doing Luka Doncic-esque Things In Spain’s ACB

Almost every season, Real Betis are a member of Spain’s top basketball division, the ACB. And almost every season, they rank near the bottom of it.

Since being promoted in only the second season of its existence as a franchise, the team founded and formerly known as Sevilla has been amongst the elite group, albeit only just. A 29-season ACB streak ended with relegation at the end of 2017/18, but immediate promotion the following season got them back to at least the basement of the big house, where they remain.

Currently sitting 16th out of 18 teams with a 10-23 record, they are once again just about to escape the drop, or so it seems. Winners of five of their last eight games, and with only one game left to play, Betis are tied in the win-loss column with the team in 17th position Granada, yet have the tiebreak advantage by virtue of beating Granada by more in their December victory (1o points) than they lost to them by last week (6 points).

Of course, had they beaten Granada last week instead, their survival would already be assured. Such is the way of Betis in the ACB; they are often just trying to stay afloat. Nevertheless, if they match Granada’s result tonight in the season’s final game, then another season of ACB play for Betis is assured. Just.

In usually being near the bottom, though, Betis do not have the pedigree of the teams at the top. They do not have the revenues generated/required from European intracontinental competition, either, and the cycle becomes self-fulfilling.

To provide some numbers as context, the two most famous teams in the ACB use their presence in the EuroLeague to wield around massive budgets. While there is no centralised database of salary information like there is in the NBA – or at least, no outsider seems to have ever sourced one – reputable external sources suggest that Barcelona and Real Madrid wield operating budgets around the €44 million mark, around €19 million of which goes towards player’s salaries.

It is true that the basketball arms of Real and Barca are both attached to, and subsidised by, the sky-high revenues generated by their football clubs. However, since 2018, when they took over the struggling Sevilla, so have been Betis. And yet their budget comes in at less than a tenth of that.

Given that that amount has to cover a 15-man roster, as well as the midseason changes that come from being near the bottom, Betis cannot pay premium salaries even though they are in the premium league. They have some NBA veterans in the forms of B.J. Johnson, Jeremy Pargo and Anzejs Pasecniks, but for the most part, they have to scuffle around, finding young veteran European bench pieces who are useful but not needle-movers (Volodymyr Gerun, Aleksandar Cvetkovic, Dairis Bertans, etc), and filling out their required Spanish passport quota with older veteran one-way players (Eulis Baez, Txemi Urtasun, etc).

The key to survival on a relative shoestring, then, is to hit home runs with unproven pieces in the hope that they break out. And in what is essentially his first professional season in Europe, this is what young Dominican Republic guard Jean Montero has done.

Born in July 2003, Montero has been a stand-out player in a league where youngsters do not usually get a look-in. With one game to go, he has averaged 17.2 points, 4.3 assist, 3.2 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game, with the scoring output being the second-highest in the league. Whereas most 19-year-olds in the ACB take seats behind the Cvetkovic and Bertans types, Montero is instead leading them.

While this is only Montero’s first season back in Spain after a stint in America, he is no stranger to the Spanish game. Indeed, he eschewed offers from American high schools to join the Gran Canaria academy in the summer of 2019, and in the 2020–21 LEB Silver (or third division) season, he averaged 18.0 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 2.5 steals per game.

After that, he left Spain to join the upstart Overtime Elite development programme for its first season, and led the competition with his average of 16.9 points, alongside 6.1 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and 3.4 steals per game. This led to a summer league spot with the New York Knicks, before returning to Spain, this time with Betis.

Montero’s status as a prized prospect, then, is not new to this season. What is new to this season, though, is the extended run of top-level play.

Whereas he had played only 29 ACB minutes in his time with Gran Canaria, Montero now nearly averages that per night for Betis, for whom he only debuted in February due to visa issues. In the interim period, Montero has also been leading the Dominican Republic national team, including scoring a team-high 22 points in 20 minutes in their World Cup qualifier victory against a relatively full strength Argentina team, where, going up against Facundo Campazzo, Nicolas Laprovittola and the like, Montero showed off his extensive scoring bag.

Recently, Montero joined some elite company when he became only the third player under 20 in the history of the ACB to record more than 20 points and 10 assists in a single game. The other two? Sergio Rodriguez in 2006 and Luka Doncic in 2016. That is quite the company to be keeping. And along with the milestones come the accolades; Montero was recently awarded the ACB’s annual Best Young Player award, in a competition that was not especially close.

Montero’s quick hands, dynamic passing, relentless aggression and seemingly-unstoppable pull-up game will see him go all the way to the top of the ACB in short order. Betis will not be able to go with him. But they will be able to say that they played a key role in it. And in a few hours, we will also know whether Montero was able to play a key role in their survival.