Maccabi Tel Aviv’s European season is on its deathbed. No one, not even the most optimistic in the yellow club, can challenge this fact. Despite this, it is impossible not to notice that there is currently not even a crack in the level of trust and support that Yannis Sapropoulos receives from the team management And from the crowd slowly began to return to the pitches.Much has been written about the Greek coach’s phenomenal adaptability to the yellow club, and one does not have to go too far back to remember that there were days when results like the Greek achieved this season would have shaken the coach’s chair. But somehow, with Yannis it’s different.
Maccabi Tel Aviv will advance tonight to its 27th game in the Euroleague, when it is in 14th place, with a balance of 11:16, which is only 40.7% success. For comparison, Maccabi’s former coach, Nevan Spahija, reached the 27th round in the 17/18 season with Balance 13:13, in 9th place, and a stubborn fight for a ticket to the playoffs. And yet, he finished that season as a lame duck, until he was replaced. True, after the 26th round Spahija suffered 4 consecutive losses, but remained in the fight until the first round. Penultimate.Sapropoulos finished his way in the Euroleague about 10 rounds to the end of the regular season, not only when he was not perceived as a lame duck, but more as a peacock in all his glory.
The owner aligns with the reasons for the failure
So how does this happen? How did the position of the coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv, the one that absorbed all the fire in unsuccessful seasons and was first on the list of changes during the season, become an island of stability under Sapropolos? One of the coaches who previously worked with Sapropolos analyzes: “Yannis is first and foremost a man of people. His ability to form and strengthen personal relationships, and build trust with the tops is no less phenomenal. He knows how to talk to the management, to the fans, to the media. He buys the journalists with half a word in Hebrew once a week, and it works. “Before we even talked about basketball, his ability to adapt to an environment that was previously toxic to coaches should not be underestimated. It is not obvious.”
Another reason for widespread support is the fact that management, owners and the public have “bought” one hundred percent the many explanations of Sapropolos for the collapse of his team this season in the Euroleague. At every opportunity, the coach lays out his doctrine and explains: the Corona has changed everything, including the budget and atmosphere at home games that were an integral part of the team’s success last year; My team played almost non-stop due to the renewal of the Israeli league and players did not really rest and were given time to clear their heads; As a result we did not make good preparation for the season compared to other Euroleague teams and did not play even one pre-season game against the Euroleague team; And also – we started the season with three injured key players.
Except when diving deeper into net professional issues, Sapropoulos does not have too many good answers to offer. So far, it seems that Maccabi’s main reason is simply the incorrect construction of the staff, and especially of the front line, in a completely opposite concept than it was last season. Instead of continuing with Quincy Icy, Tariq Black and Jaylen Reynolds-style athletic monsters, Maccabi went for Dragon Bender and Ante Zizic, whose connection to athletics is purely coincidental.
The professional problem: the benefits are not reflected
“Professionally, the basketball that Yannis presents this year is no different from the basketball that brought him to the Final Four twice,” says the coach who worked with him in the past. “It is a basketball that is based on creating play situations that can reflect the relative advantages of his team. This is how he did it with Spanoulis and Printzis, this is how he managed to highlight a relatively gray actor like Matt Logsky, and this is how he created a winning collaboration between Othello Hunter and Bryant Dunston. This season it is not happening for several reasons, and perhaps mainly because this time it does not have too many relative advantages that it can bring. Even the strongest force, Scotty Wilbkin, the rivalry has already learned to stop and he has not been able to come up with other solutions. “
A deeper dig in numbers reflects a style of play that may need to be updated and refreshed. Maccabi is lethal when it mainly manages to run, and is in second place in the factory in points from the transition game (7.4 per game). But the rest of the game states a stuck, non-flowing and not particularly team basketball: the Yellows are ranked third from the end in assists (16.2), and last in the game mode that perhaps most reflects the flow of a game – the amount of shots in catch and shot, with only 15% of the team points. This season. Another interesting fact is that although Sapropolus has signed a clear post-up player like Zizic – Maccabi is one last place from points with its back to only a 5% basket of points overall – another relative advantage that Sapropolos has not been able to express.
At the moment, Sapropoulos is still carried on the waves of momentum from the previous season (which as I recall did not come to an end). Unless an unprecedented miracle happens, he will start next season with a failure in the Euroleague on his back. His popularity among management and fans may give him a privilege that no other coach has, but the Yellows cannot afford another season of defeat at the bottom of the factory, especially when the fans are due to return to the stands. Even before it has to put together the staff and decide who the Israelis and foreigners will be, the management will have a difficult decision to make. A decision that might decide the future of the club.