Patty Mills Signs with ASVEL: His First EuroLeague, with Tony Parker as Coach

Canberra, San Antonio, Tokyo, Tenerife. Patty Mills' career path adds a stop on Monday that was missing from a nearly twenty-year resume: Villeurbanne. LDLC ASVEL announced the signing of the Australian point guard on a one-year contract, finally opening the EuroLeague door to him at age 38.

It's a signing that says as much about the player as it does about the club executing it. ASVEL needed a veteran capable of steering the ship through the long nights of continental competition. Mills needed a stage worthy of what he still has to offer.

What He's Shown This Season

Whoever signs Mills in 2026 isn't betting on a washed-up name. In his season with La Laguna Tenerife, between the Basketball Champions League and the Liga Endesa, the Australian was once again an unsolvable problem for any defense. He dropped 36 points on FC Barcelona. He dropped 29 on Real Madrid, and that was in the playoffs, when every possession is a knife fight.

That Mills has a name of his own among Australian fans: FIBA Patty, the player who grows when the court narrows and the clock tightens.

Parker, the Thread That Explains It All

The move makes sense looking back twelve years. With the Spurs, Mills was the natural successor to Tony Parker in running the offense, and from that era came a friendship that has withstood the passage of time and continents. Today Parker is president of ASVEL and, since this summer, also its head coach.

The detail is not insignificant, because the French club is going through a delicate financial moment. According to Eurohoops, those turbulences didn't cool the player's commitment: Mills kept his word to the French project when others would have sought a more comfortable exit.

A Resume That Impresses

He debuted in the NBA with Portland, made his mark in San Antonio, and won the championship ring there in 2014. Then came Brooklyn, Atlanta, Miami, Utah, and the Clippers, always with the same reputation: ice-cold shooter and locker room leader.

With the national team, he wrote his most memorable page. He was the soul of the Boomers who won bronze in Tokyo 2020, Australia's first Olympic medal in basketball.

Now he has one last assignment pending. The 2026-27 EuroLeague awaits him in an ASVEL jersey with an old teammate on the bench.