Jean Montero is facing six months out after surgery on his left knee, leaving Olympiacos without one of the guards they recruited to shape their season. The club confirmed the operation to repair his lateral meniscus on Friday, 30 October. Hours later, Olympiacos beat Olimpia Milan 84–78. It was a useful demonstration of their depth, but hardly a replacement for the player they have lost. The surgery and recovery estimate were confirmed by Eurohoops following the club's announcement.
Montero's absence is particularly costly because he had already shown what he could bring. Olympiacos signed the Dominican guard to a three-year contract in July, after he averaged 14.4 points and 4.8 assists in the previous EuroLeague season with Valencia. On 13 October he scored 26 in Olympiacos' 102–97 comeback win in Valencia. That is the sort of shot creation a team cannot simply redistribute with a substitution.
Friday's win offered a first look at the alternative. According to the club's match report, Codi Miller-McIntyre scored 24 points and handed out four assists, Sasha Vezenkov added 23 points and Tyson Ward contributed 14. Olympiacos led 25–19 after one quarter, were level 44–44 at half-time and carried a 69–61 advantage into the fourth. Milan still cut the gap to 75–73 with three minutes left before Olympiacos finished the job.
The closing stretch mattered. Cory Joseph and Mbaye N'Diaye made contributions late, while Nikola Milutinov returned from his toe problem. Young guard Nikos Plotas also scored two points in his first home EuroLeague appearance. None of those developments makes a six-month absence painless, but they show that coach Giorgos Bartzokas has more than one way to organise possessions without Montero. Miller-McIntyre was the leading scorer on this occasion; Vezenkov remained a major scoring outlet rather than becoming an afterthought.
Bartzokas addressed the loss before discussing the Milan result. In the club's 31 October account of his press conference, he expressed the squad's distress over Montero and questioned the strain of Europe's congested calendar, pointing to injuries at several clubs. That is a wider concern for the competition, although the calendar alone cannot be assigned as the cause of any particular injury.
For EuroLeague fantasy managers, Montero's outlook has changed from a short-term availability watch to a long-term roster decision. A six-month club estimate offers little reason to expect a regular-season return. Whether he can be retained on an injured-reserve list depends on the rules of the individual fantasy competition; managers without that flexibility face a much harder choice. His expected absence should not be confused with a guaranteed return date in April.
Miller-McIntyre's 24 points and four assists make him the obvious immediate player to reassess, particularly while Evan Fournier and Tyler Dorsey are also absent. But one strong scoring night is not proof that every missing Montero possession now belongs to him. Joseph's late involvement and the distribution of offence through Vezenkov are reasons to watch actual minutes and playmaking responsibilities in the next game, rather than manufacture fantasy-point forecasts.
Olympiacos host Crvena Zvezda on Friday, 6 November, in EuroLeague Round 10, according to their official fixture list. That will be the next European test of the guard rotation after the Milan escape. The result against Milan showed Olympiacos can win without Montero. The next several months will reveal how consistently they can do it.
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