Fans of Hapoel Jerusalem in Malaga (Yehuda Shohat)
About two minutes into the game, when Tenerife completed the comeback and took a 61:65 advantage over Hapoel Jerusalem, Dudu Bakel looked up. "I stopped looking at the game and started talking to Alon," said the father of a Hapoel Jerusalem fan who was murdered in an attack at the Alley pub in Tel Aviv seven and a half years ago. A minute later, when basketball legend Marcelinho Huertas put the Spaniards up 63-67, Aleksandar Dzikic also looked up, looking for where their help would come from, perhaps from Mama Milka Dzikic who passed away three days ago.
There is no other logical explanation – other than the ghosts and demons – for erasing the difference ten seconds later, thanks to a crazy triple by the much-maligned Sim Sander Venna, who got a bonus shot from the line. Even fewer logical explanations can be found for the missed completely free three-pointer at the last second by Bruno Fittipaldo - a fifty percent scorer from range in both the powerful Spanish league and the Champions League.
Beat a team that is big on the factory. Hapoel Jerusalem players celebrate (Photo: official website, FIBA website)
In other words, there are probably plausible explanations: Hapoel Jerusalem's defense is the closest thing to perfection in European basketball today. A concert of movement, cover and incessant attrition of the opponent. Such attrition consistently keeps opponents' shooting percentages to a minimum, leaving finger-jerked players for shots that miraculously can't find the ring.
Professionally, Chos Vidoretta's Tenerife is big on Hapoel Jerusalem and big on the factory. A historic team, a bit like Sevilla for the Europa League or, if you will, Real Madrid for the Champions League. A super team in terms of the factory, with two historic players in the form of Huertas and Giorgi Shermadini, whose combination is almost impossible to neutralize, and around them a variety of scenes that leave each team with the option of choosing its own poison and dying.
Yesterday's Jerusalem had no solutions for the dancing Brazilian, whose body biases are poetry and whose deliverability is a masterpiece. Next to him, Cornelius — the league's Defensive Player of the Year — looks like a kid from the basketball. Vidoretta's basketball is based on a series of blocks for Huertas, after which he chooses whether to roll all the way to the ring, throw from half distance or, as he usually does, find the free agent.
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Find a solution in defense. Dzikic (Photo: official website, FIBA website)
In the absence of solutions to the problem, Dzikic tried to deal with the excellent Georgi by keeping him away from the basket and trying to get him to drop a ball to the floor, thus exploiting his clumsiness to grab balls or at least cause him to lose them. In the second and third quarters it worked pretty well, in the fourth quarter when the Spaniards' threes came in at high percentages, it already seemed almost hopeless for the Jerusalemites.
In the final attack, Jerusalem took an educated bet: not to let Huertas and Shermadini get to the basket, even if it left a Tenerife player for a free throw from the outside. Dzikic, a one-time basketball brain, knows full well that winning close games is a profession — his team has done it this season over and over again — and that 50 percent from beyond the arc during the regular season promises nothing when the clock ticks back in a game from which there is no turning back.
That's how Fittipaldo hit the shot with two seconds left on the clock, costing Jerusalem fans at least two years of their lives, before the winds did their job, throwing the ball too far right and Jerusalem for a second European final in history.
Create a homely atmosphere in Malaga. Fans of Hapoel Jerusalem (Photo: official website, FIBA website)
Even before the game, it was other spirits brought with them by Hapoel Jerusalem fans - more than three thousand of them raided the city during the day, marched in the streets, sang on the subway, cafes, squares and wherever possible, and celebrated as if there was no tomorrow. After all, it is known, at least for those who have been a Hapoel Jerusalem fan for some years, that the best time for celebrations is before the game, because after it - there is no knowing.
About two hours before the game, the thousands gathered at the gathering point and began a march that included smoke grenades, flares and fireworks, with Spanish police blocking the roads for them and watching the events with great interest. So did the residents of the buildings, who rushed to the balconies to document the moment.
For those two hours, the decision to hold the Final Four in Malaga seemed like the sanest thing for Jerusalem fans as well. In retrospect, incoming owner Matan Adelson's decision to refuse to commit to the BCL for continued participation in the factory next season saved us from the possibility of canceling an event of this magnitude due to the war in the South; It also allowed Jerusalem fans a few days of respite from the incessant stress in the Levant.
On the other hand, for the Champions League, the results of the first night of the Final Four seemed like a particularly bad bet. It's not just the gamblers who put their money on a final between the two Spaniards, but also the organization itself, which must have hoped for a hall full of fans and a hot atmosphere in the final, and instead get a meaningless Spanish derby in the third-place game, and a game in front of a half-empty or sleepy arena in the final, even if another thousand fans arrive from Greater Jerusalem – that is, Red Israel – by tomorrow evening.
Jerusalem and Bonn spoiled the celebration for the Spaniards. Cornelius and Segev celebrating (Photo: official website, FIBA website)
On the sidelines, the hall in Malaga looks like the community center in Ma'a lot Tarshiha from the outside, but on the inside it is very impressive: a beautiful, functional, very comfortable hall, with tremendous acoustics, excellent visibility from all the stands, and even there are clean and comfortable toilets and running water from the taps - something Pais Arena in Jerusalem can dream of. Yes, toilets and running water too.
Comparing the Final Four at the Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena to an event at the Palacio de la Shamata de Arena in Jerusalem, or even the hall with the changing name at Yad Eliyahu - like comparing Dzikic's basketball to Franco's. Danny, not Generalissimo Francisco.
Tomorrow night this venue will host the underdog final. On paper, the Germans from Bonn - with the cute fans who formed a brotherly alliance with the Jerusalemites against the Spaniards - are better. Just four losses all season will attest to that. But who knows, maybe Alexander the Great Dzikic has more ghosts left in his hat.
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- Hapoel Jerusalem