Intense personal training • Brave friendship with Danny Abdia • Tough defensive game that has become his hallmark • Belief from the populous • And the need for the most minutes on the floor • The 20-year-old guard is the next hot thing for the Yellows
Crescent moon.
The next exit of Maccabi Tel Aviv?
Photo:
Oded Karni
In recent years, Maccabi Tel Aviv has set itself the goal of promoting and investing in stars who leave the youth department and integrate them into the senior team.
This has economic, marketing and professional implications.
Economically, if Yuval Sussman and Danny Abdia had not taken their place in the senior in recent years, the sums that would have been invested to bring in Israeli players from other teams as well as their salaries would have been much higher.
From a marketing point of view, it is clear that it is better for Israeli players to be the face of the club, and professionally the fact that every two or three years a player from the youth department rises to the senior team allows the Yellows to recruit talented young players who know they have horizons.
Sussman, Abdia, and now Dori Sahar
This trend began with Yuval Sussman, continued as mentioned with Abdia and now the entire system is focused on the success of Dori Sahar.
In February 2019, a few weeks after celebrating his 18th birthday, Sahar began training with graduates.
He received extra training from the Croatian Veliko Provic, who worked in the Yellows' team in recent years before traveling with Danny Abdia to Washington (his personal trainer in the NBA integration process).
This season he stays after training with assistant coach Noam Levy.
Every morning after a game in which he did not receive significant minutes, Sahar arrives early and trains in person with one of the assistant coaches or with a professional from the club's scouting and player development department, and sometimes also with the professional director of the youth department, Oren Aharoni.
"From the moment Dori enters the youth department, the whole system directs him to be a legitimate player in the senior team," says Aharoni. "I believe this will happen in the coming years and he could be part of the rotation in the Euroleague."
Maccabist by birth, really
The concept of 'Macbeth from birth' has become chewy and worn out in recent years.
Any player who has been in the yellow club for a few months and may not be sick of ways to achieve victory already receives this title.
Crescent, on the other hand, is a full-fledged, full-fledged Macbeth.
At the age of 6, the earliest possible age, he entered the youth department of Maccabi Tel Aviv and has not left even for a moment. He passed in all age groups, and with almost all of them won titles. His two brothers Nadav and Oren play in the department and his sister Gili is in the club's girls group. Recent.
"From a young age I would come to the hall every Thursday and I dreamed of being on the pitch in those moments," the player said recently, "from the first second I went up to the seniors the whole system enveloped me. Now I have to give back."
His mother, Alona Friedman, was considered one of the leading models in Israel in the 1980s and later also hosted the popular TV show "Shishi Chai" on Channel 2 alongside Meirav Michaeli and also worked as a journalist for "Lady Globes".
His father Alon played tennis in his youth and now works as an attorney. People who know the family closely tell of very involved parents, but do not intervene. Unlike other parents, they never complained to the coach or management about the child's playing minutes.
Scotty Pippin of Abdia
In his youth, Sahar became one of Abdia's best friends.
The two, who led the department's teams to many degrees, were called the "D Brothers", and increased to do one of the professionals in the department who called Crescent "the Scottish Pippin of Abdia".
The actor himself said in the past: "We have a blind understanding between us."
The best friendship between the two is not only on the field, but off it as well.
Abdia has spent hours at Sahar's home, including long PlayStation games, with friends testifying that Sahar usually wins in basketball, electronic of course.
In the first closure, the two worked intensively with Maccabi fitness coach Regev Fanan, and Sahar added six kilos of muscle mass at the time.
In general, the young player is very strict about proper nutrition and rest between workouts.
The first opportunity to break free from Abdia's heavy shadow and excel alone came at the World High School Championships in April 2019. Abdia was not released from Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Sahar was one of the stars who led the new high school to a historic title.
"Every time I played with Dori I felt I was cheating, that I was with seven players in defense against five of the opponent, because he saves for three players," says Nahum Segal, the coach of the new high school team, "If I become a coach in the Premier League - he is the first player I take "His ceiling is very high."
Segal says that during his years at Sahar High School, he was never late for training, although most of them take place at 07:00 in the morning as part of the cooperation with Maccabi Tel Aviv. In the championship itself, the talented guard was the Israeli player who gathered most of the scouts present at the event. The others who fell were robbed on the way.
Another opportunity to stand out came a few months later, at the European Under-18 Championships.
Sahar and Noam Dovrat, the talent of Maccabi Rishon Lezion and a good friend, led the youth team to the gold medal and back to the first tier on the continent.
This summer he is expected to be one of the key players in the reserve team that will try to retain the title from the previous two championships, this time without Yam Madar and of course without teammate Abdia.
Yannis lit up and began mowing
With all due respect to guidance and support from the system, if the team coach does not believe in the player, he has no real chance of progressing.
But in the present case, the story is completely different.
Maccabi testifies that from the very first moment, Yannis Sapropoulos, who often attends youth team training, turned on Sahar and saw in him the potential to join the senior team.
Already in the summer of 2019, Sapropoulos wanted to add the player to the team, but after consultation between the coach, professional manager Nikola Vujicic and head of the scouting department Avi Even, it was decided to send him to Maccabi Hod Hasharon from the national league.
During last season, Sapropolos summoned Sahar to many training sessions, partly due to the injuries of Maccabi Tel Aviv players, and he even missed some of the games and training sessions in Hod Hasharon, but still received quite a few minutes of play from then-Hod Hasharon coach Nati Cohen and started with 18 games. "He's one of the smartest players I've coached," Cohen says. "He's ego-free and little to go wrong with.
This season, Sahar is all about Maccabi.
After a period in which there were few opportunities, in recent months several teams approached Maccabi and examined the possibility of accepting him on loan.
Sapropolus vehemently refused.
The team says that recently the Greek coach also began to "mow" Sahar in training and raised the bar of demands from him.
"When Yannis starts doing this to you - it means he believes in you."
"As long as Yannis is at Maccabi Dori can be a legitimate player there, even in the Euroleague," says a professional who knows closely what is happening. "Dori appreciates every moment he is at Maccabi, and Yannis notices this. He loves such players who respect and appreciate where they are and do not take "It goes without saying. He's the best alumni coach Dorrie can ask for."
And what about the minutes of the game?
Sahar (20, 1.95 m) works hard to justify trust in him.
He is one of the first to attend every training session, and usually stands and throws long minutes together with Yuval Sussman who serves as a kind of mentor for him, and shares the experience of one who has gone through a similar process.
"To make a real leap forward, he still needs to improve his ability to reach the ring and also his defensive toughness," Aharoni analyzes.
A look at the statistics tables reveals a gradual process.
In the 2018/19 season he is a partner in six league games, last season he played in 16 games, and this season he took part in 11 games out of 13, but there is still a feeling that he can get more opportunities.
At the beginning of the season, Sapropoulos made it clear that he did not intend to share Sahar and the other youngsters in the Euroleague.
"It's like throwing them into the fire and they could burn," he said.
So apparently tonight we will not see the talented player go up on the floor at the Medellinum Forum in Milan, but with the expected load of games for the Yellows and with the ability he reveals in almost every opportunity he gets this season, Sahar should play much more in the next league games.
Why him?
Involved in the game - when he is on the field, 20.5% of attacks end in his own hands (throwing, reaching the penalty line or losing a ball. Excluding assists).
Choosing smart shots - 56% of his shots come in the ring area.
When he throws to 3 it is in high percentages - 6/14 (43%).
Correct position - 17 of the 57 points he scored in all frames came from second-chance situations because he knows how to position himself nicely (whether on the arc of the three or cutting inwards) after an offensive rebound.
Gets along with the captain - when he plays with John Dibertolomeo he is much more active, touches the ball much more and his productivity increases significantly.
While with Scotty Wilbkin he rarely participates in the attacking game and when he does, it is much less successful.
For example, with Dibertolomeo by his side, Crescent scores 20.5 points per 75 passes at 65.2% effective from the field and 50 percent at 3.
With Wilbkin the numbers drop to 9.2 points with 42.9% effective from the field and 0 percent to 3.
The data are courtesy of analyst Alon Smuha and are based on the minutes the player received in the three local settings this season - League, National Cup and Winner's Cup.
