Maccabi Tel Aviv opens season/Yotam Ronen
Olympiakos appeared on Tuesday for a seemingly easy game against Elba Berlin without three of its senior interior players, and fell behind surprisingly at home.
Moses Wright, who signed in her ranks only a week ago and had time to train with his new team only once, was hot in his Euroleague debut and scored 15 points.
Hapoel Tel Aviv went out at the same time for a key game in Badalona.
Precisely in the hall where she was eliminated from the Eurocup last year, she flew to an astronomical advantage, won and came close to securing the automatic ticket to the quarter-finals.
Her MVP was Will Cummings, who arrived a month and a half ago as a backup to Jacob Brown, and scored 19 points in their first game together.
Hapoel Jerusalem also took a significant step towards the quarter-finals last night - in the Champions League.
She dominated the paint and enjoyed an astronomical 71.9 two-point percentage in Belgrade against Karsijaka.
Jacori Williams, who was brought in two and a half weeks ago in a forced exchange at the expense of Morris Andor, was accurate with 7 of 7.
three games.
Three different European factories.
Three random looking samples.
Three winners, each at her level and each with her ambitions.
These three cases had one thing in common: a new entrant, who was not included in the original plans, stepped up at the moment of truth and made a substantial contribution on the way to an important victory.
And the outsiders from last season at least had Jaylen Adams on their side / photo editing, Ehrle Weisberg
On Wednesday at 19:00 the transfer window in the Euroleague will close, and the teams will not be able to register any more new players until the end of the season.
The vast majority of them were active in recent weeks in repairs and replacements, and signed about 25 foreigners and locals, more significant, much more and less.
Among the few that were not active in the market, you can find Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, who from the beginning enjoyed deep rosters of at least 16 players, Monaco - and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
The Yellows, in Avi Even's first season as a professional manager, did not have much work last summer.
They completed the main tasks even before they left the field for the last time;
The contract extensions of Lorenzo Brown, Wade Baldwin and Bonzie Coulson, during the peak season of their careers, were a real and not obvious achievement - and the club needed to find the missing cent on the dollar and find the little that separated them from the Final Four: upgrade the front line, and deepen the line the back
But the use of the word "deepening" is a bit problematic.
After the early closure with Tamir Blatt, the medical insurance saga of Brian Angola and the protracted procrastination in finding replacements for Jarl Martin and Alex Poithers - the team appeared for the new season in a thinner version than it had last year;
One less Israeli nation (no replacement was signed for the retiring Guy Panini, in an act that only affected the situation in the Premier League) and above all one less foreign nation.
The thought behind the move was that in light of the supposedly low supply, it might be better to wait and identify on the fly the weak points that need fixing.
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From the beginning it was decided to leave room for repair.
But the fix didn't come.
Professional manager Avi Even/Dani Maron
This correction has not arrived, although there is quite a bit to correct.
In the first week of October, following Baldwin's injury, the club was engaged in efforts to quickly land a replacement guard.
They were interested in Ipa Lundberg (whose position at Virtus Bologna did not seem stable in those days) and reverted to the Daryl Macon option, but less than 36 hours after the impressive victory over Partizan Belgrade in the opening round, the war broke out and devoured the cards.
As soon as the dimensions of the Black Sabbath massacre and their effects on Israel became clear, it was clear that reality had completely changed.
The foreigners left the country, the team moved to host in Belgrade and all thoughts about purchasing were dismissed without anyone even having to say so.
Then came the pay cut crisis, but over time it became clear that not everything was black.
After the players' rebellion, and in light of the compensation that came/will come from the state, it seems that this cloud was dispersed and removed;
And regarding the difficulty of landing new foreigners in a war-torn country - Maccabi's arch-rivals at the top of the league have proven that this is actually a possible task.
More than two-thirds of the regular season in the EuroLeague has already passed, and it is already possible to state that none of the new foreigners - Hasiel Rivero, James Webb and especially Antonios Cleveland - brought the news and did not manage to upgrade their predecessors in any way (which were not a resounding success either).
The insulting word "flop" would not be detached from reality in their cases.
The data presented in the chart illustrates the almost complete similarity between the trio of 2022/23 and the trio of 2023/24, but one more element should be added to it: last season there was also Austin Hollins followed by Jaylen Adams (and from time to time, Shomo Shemayim, even Suleiman Breymo), So the blanket was longer.
14 consecutive games under double figures.
Hasiel Rivero/GettyImages, Nikola Krstic/MB Media
Webb has recently found his place in the rotation, and has begun to reinvent himself.
This is the second time, by the way, that this has happened to him.
He had a similar positive wave in the first half of December, after which he disappeared until he came back to life last week, when he was part of the most successful five against Panathinaikos and Real Madrid.
The 18 points he scored yesterday were a season high for him, after a month and a half in which he did not hit double figures.
And yet, he too was probably destined to be a supplementary player, unsurprisingly, because that was his role in Valencia as well.
It is doubtful that he will occupy the senior slot in the most problematic position in the team - the power forward - and therefore, Jake Cohen and Roman Sorkin are the ones who usually start in the top five.
Rivero actually became the third in the top four, after Sorkin and Josh Niebo.
He manages to give a positive performance from time to time (or should we say: once in a while), especially on offense, but has not reached double-digit points in 14 straight games, and has not collected more than three rebounds in his last seven Euroleague appearances.
These two at least still exist professionally.
Cleveland was completely wiped out;
His decision-making in the attack was lacking from the first moment, and the defensive tact that he seemingly brought with him was not reflected, when he got involved time and time again in fouls.
Last year, when the Yellows failed with Hollins and Hilliard, they added Jalen Adams and got 6.7 points per game from him in the Euroleague, until he got injured.
This player, in positions 2 and 3, who can complement the leading guards - play alongside them and in their place (for example, on days when Brown hits 2 of 15 from the field, like this week in Madrid) - is the one Maccabi lacks the most.
The players in the 8th to 12th places in Maccabi Tel Aviv's rotation - just above Villerban and Basconia/Walla! system, image processing
To understand how short the Israeli representative is compared to the other Euroleague teams, we examined the data of the players in the 8-12 positions in the rotation.
It should be said in advance that this is not an exact science: the averages refer only to games in which everyone participates, and on the time scale there are deviations and changes derived from injuries, new signings, other players who leave, coaches who change, and more.
But after 24 cycles, you can certainly identify the trend.
Oded Ketch's first seven is distinct and clear: Brown, Baldwin, Colson and Nivvo not only always start in the five, but also receive the most minutes;
After them in the time quota on the floor are Tamir Blatt and Sorkin, and they were joined by Webb.
The players who were "put on the grill" as part of the test are Rivero (15:43 minutes per game), DiBartholomew (15:17), Cleveland (11:43), Cohen (9:51) and Rafi Manko (8:19).
In terms of playing minutes, this quintet of substitutes is ranked 10-13 compared to players in the same position in the other teams;
It averages 21.1 points in common (13th place in the Euroleague);
And if it is claimed - probably rightly - that the contribution of such complementary players should not necessarily be translated in the shooting column, then the weighted index of the five stands at 18.3 for the evening.
Villerban (15.4) and tonight's opponent, Basconia (12), are the only ones who receive less than 8-12 players in their food chain.
These numbers and stories boil down to the simple bottom line: Maccabi Tel Aviv's dependence on its stars only deepened in light of its continued failure this past summer.
In a "normal" season, it is not impossible that some change would have already been made.
Now, with the deadline around the corner, the indications show that the yellows are not active at all in the market.
Not interested, not contacting and not checking.
In the remaining six days, it will become clear whether they have definitively resigned themselves to the mediocrity represented by their new foreigners.
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