After last night’s big victory (Friday) of Maccabi Tel Aviv over Barcelona, the Yellows have good news and even better news: the good news is that they managed to forget the embarrassing loss to Wilburban with a particularly impressive victory over who is considered the best team in the Euroleague.
The even better news is that 7 of the champion’s next 9 games will be home games. This means that if Maccabi manages to keep the house, it will end the next 9 games with a positive balance, of at least 11:13.
Welcome, Dragon Bender. Just as the loss at Wheelerban is considered a turning point in this crazy season of Maccabi so far, so last night’s victory has quite a few angles that can affect the entire season. The most prominent of these is that of Dragon Bender: until yesterday, Maccabi quite “broke their head” and did not really know how to treat him at the end of the contract at the end of the month. Bender’s ability from the beginning of the season has been very disappointing for all decision makers at Maccabi, it’s no secret, but the fact that the player market is very sparse in position number 4, made Maccabi people think it is better to stay with Bender than with nothing in hand.
Then came the game yesterday. Undoubtedly the best performance of the young forward since his arrival, with 15 points at 70% for 2, good defense and body language as we have not yet seen from him this season. This game, Maccabi is convinced, is for Bender the turning point both in terms of personal ability and especially in terms of how Maccabi will approach the negotiating table when it decides on its future soon.
Bender himself said after the game: “I’m just glad we won. We came after a hard week, but after the game in France we came very determined to win this game and we deserved to win. We still need to improve on the whole issue of closing the quarters and be smarter, but it’s a huge win For us, and there is no doubt that we deserved to take such a game after several similar games that we have already lost. ”
Who needs threes? Yesterday’s Maccabi looked the complete opposite of Wheelerban’s Maccabi, at a level that is hard to believe is the same team. For this, it is worth giving credit to Maccabi’s professional team, because it is not easy to “pick up” players after a fall show and make them look 180 degrees, the complete opposite in just 48 hours. From the first second the Yellows came sharp, with a defensive toughness that we saw very little this season, and the players of Yannis Sapropoulos managed to disrupt Barcelona almost the entire game plan. And what do you know, just as Maccabi Tel Aviv lost to Willerban with only three threes by the French – the exact same amount was enough for Maccabi to beat the Euroleague leader.
Two of the three lone threes were by Tyler Dorsey, who after a terrible game in France returned with 14 points. “It was another tough away game,” Dorsey said at the conclusion. “We fought as a team. I have to give credit to our coach, he came up with a clear game plan and we stuck to it. Defensively, everything he planned for us – happened. It’s our huge win, and we finally got it after so many close games we lost. We have Now a lot of home games and we have to continue on this path. “
