Joining the team during a season often creates unusual situations.
Players suddenly disconnect from the team and what they are going through in the media, and there is a dramatic change with the transition to their role in the blue-and-white uniform.
Players who are in distress in their team, they are required to change direction and become leading players in the national uniform.
There are quite a few situations where the team serves as a lifeline for players or aids in getting out of complicated situations.
The key is to know how to make the separation, and come "clean" to the national mission.
It's a not-so-simple character test, which began yesterday with the team's first training session ahead of the opening of the World Cup qualifiers against Poland on Thursday, and it seems that the biggest dilemma on the subject is Jake Cohen.
The player is a very important screw in the team, and in fact has become its anchor in recent years.
He serves her faithfully and successfully.
Whenever he came, he would provide great output.
In the previous campaign - the European Championship qualifiers - he gave a great performance and averaged 16.4 points per game and four rebounds per game.
His commitment is unquestionable, and even last season, when he played in Spain, he reached the national team games.
Cohen never came to the team as a key player in Maccabi Tel Aviv, but always as a rotation player in the yellow. This time he comes to represent the country when he is actually a player who does not exist in the Maccabi Euroleague rotation. Out of 11 Maccabi Euroleague games, in six of them he was not on the squad at all, in three he dressed but was not a partner, and in the two games he played he recorded 11 minutes together.
In the coming days, we will know if this will have an impact on his ability on the team: Will the forward who always knew how to do the job for the team know how to do it this time as well?
Will the big drying up in the Euroleague harm his fitness and confidence?
And maybe he will even make the team jump out of the situation he is in at Maccabi, when the great motivation to prove himself will do its thing?
Jake Cohen is one of the fascinating stories of the campaign.
One thing is for sure - in the past the team needed him.
Now he needs a team no less.
On a bench at Maccabi, Photo: Alan Shiver,
From the back seat
Cohen is not the only one from the depths of Maccabi's bench who will have to change phase sharply.
Although she continues to play in the Euroleague, Maccabi Tel Aviv released Cohen and Yiftach Ziv to the team window. Ziv paved his way to the front of the stage in the national uniform in the previous campaign as a Gilboa / Galil player. Now, after moving to the Yellows, his situation is different.
Ziv started the season with a combined 24 minutes in Maccabi's two opening games in the Euroleague, but since then, in five games, he has played together for five and a half minutes.
In the other two he was not a partner and in the other two he was not included in the faculty at all.
Now, Ziv and Cohen will have to move from the back seat to the front of the stage.
This is not an easy task, and it will be intriguing to find out if they know how to make the switch.
Yiftach Ziv.
He, too, will have to prove to the team what he does not succeed at Maccabi, Photo: Oded Karni,
