Numbers that are on a steep decline • Lack of a natural coordinator next to him • And maybe everything in the head at all?
• Just before the meeting with Panathinaikos and Oded Katash, we went out to check out what the big star of Maccabi Tel Aviv is going through
Wilbkin.
Sharp drop in numbers
Photo:
Oded Karni
"Scotty is not God, he's just a human being. It makes sense for every player to have ups and downs, and we know he will come back to himself. It's all a matter of time."
The things Yannis Sapropoulos said this week about Scotty Wilbkin make perfect sense.
Indeed, everyone has less good times, but anyone who follows the player closely can not miss the fact that this is not a natural decline in ability, but a long period when things are going wrong with him.
"Israel Today" is trying to understand what the Maccabi Tel Aviv star is going through.
How sharp is the decline in capacity?
Last season, Wilbkin was considered one of the top three guards in Europe, along with Shane Larkin and Mike James.
The current season, however, is his weakest in his career, and the last few weeks have put him in the worst period since arriving near Elijah.
The drop in points compared to last season is not dramatic (14.5 vs. 16.1), but what about the drop of more than ten percent off the arc (32.7 vs. 43.5)?
When it comes to a player who has thrown nearly 200 threes this season (second place in the factory), the low percentages are even more troubling.
In an interview with News 12 last month, Wilbkin said: "Whoever says I can't win games is probably crazy."
We tested things in the reality test.
Last season Wilbkin won a lot of close games, but this season the story is different.
Wilbkin took a crucial shot from outside the arc seven times - and missed in all cases.
Throughout the season, Sapropoulos insisted on going only with his star in the important moments, and made Maccabi's final exercises transparent and easy to stop.
Only in the last game against Valencia Wilbkin Sopsel in the important minutes.
What happened, you ask?
The Yellows came out with a victory.
"There is no need to expand on Scotty's importance for the club and for us, the players," Oz Blazer said this week.
He's absolutely right.
From a budgetary point of view, Maccabi Tel Aviv put most of the eggs in the baskets of Wilbkin and Omri Caspi this year - the only ones in the team who earn more than a million dollars. We expanded on the first, and we will expand later, and the second hardly played this season. February left with no real chance of advancing to the quarterfinals?
Does he suffer from mental problems?
"Scotty is one of the most competitive people there is," Maccabi says, and it may be that this is where the problem lies.
When Wilbkin realized that the chances of qualifying for the next stage were slim and that in fact the European season was over, he may have lost a bit of the desire to play and compete at the level we are used to.
Also, since the beginning of the season Sapropoulos has put a lot on the shoulders of the star, professionally and mentally.
"Scotty is our leader, we will live and die with him," the Greek declared in an attempt to fill him with confidence after some misses of important shots, but may also have increased the pressure on him.
Quite a few times he seems just mentally exhausted.
This is also where the contract issue comes into play.
Chris Jones has been playing like crazy lately, in part because he wants the Yellows to exercise the option on his contract for another season, Elijah Bryant and Tyler Dorsey know their NBA dreams depend on the performance they show until the end of the season, and most other players don't know what Will happen with them next season.
Wilbkin, on the other hand, has a guaranteed contract for another two years with an economic upgrade each season.
In moments like this, when a player needs to find new energies within him, the fact that he is confident in his place for next season has effects.
In this case they may not be positive.
And maybe there are even physical problems that bother you?
In an interview with "Israel Today" at the beginning of the season, Wilbkin revealed: "People do not know that in my first season at Maccabi I injured my thumb, and most of the year I could not throw properly."
Sources who know the actor closely say that he is like that, does not like to be pitied, and therefore does not tell everything in real time.
For the game in Milan three weeks ago, which was only the third in which he did not score in the yellow uniform, Wilbkin came up with a bandage on his thumb (the same finger injured from the first season), and only after the game did Sapropolos explain that he played injured.
In recent games he has been without a bandage and the coach does not mention the injury, but with three threes out of the last 18 shots in the Euroleague - we will not be surprised if the medical problem still bothers him.
Maccabi intends to give Wilbkin a little rest, hoping that he will return physically and mentally refreshed.
It is hard to believe that Sapropoulos will take advantage of the fact that in the near future there are no important games in the Israeli league, and even in the Euroleague there is not much left to play, to disable the player for a short time - and currently it seems to take off during the games.
So what is being done to change the situation?
Here we come to the point where everything can change, even professionally.
Maccabi Tel Aviv's best basketball in the Wilbkin era was at the beginning of last season, when Knight Walters played alongside him in the top five until he was injured. The No. 1 season in yellow suffers greatly from the lack of a dominant coordinator.
Jones has recently begun to enter this slot.
While he is different from Walters and needs more of the ball in his hands, he is a coordinator who makes the others better, until recently Sapropoulos called him a "leader."
The last two league games were the first in the local arena that the two played together.
Could it be that this is the beginning of a trend that will do Wilbkin and Maccabi Tel Aviv good?
