Yad Eliyahu was supposed to be jammed packed way back on Sunday June 15th for the third and decisive game of the 2024/25 season finals between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Jerusalem. The winner at the end of the night was supposed to hoist the championship plate high into the air in all of its glory as would celebrate with all of their might.

However, that’s not exactly how it happened. The Israel-Iran War broke out early in the morning of Friday June 13th and game three never took place as the season was left with a blank page and a champion was never crowned with the league administration deciding not to award the title.

Fast forward almost 100 days later and the two squads were back at Yad Eliyahu, not to decide last season’s title but to look ahead and open the season in a festive as way as possible with the Super Cup despite the war with Hamas in Gaza still in full swing.

The league wanted to make sure that no one would think that this was a way to play game three to try and pretend that a champion would be declared as they said and wrote in all of the lead up to the contest. But the basketball fan can only fantasize what could have been, what would have been and what could have been.

The players on the respective teams are quite different than the ones that had been on the rosters back in June with wholesale changes from both sides.

Out for Maccabi are Rokas Jokubaitis, Levi Randolph, Trevion Williams, Rafi Menco and Jake Cohen and in are TJ Leaf, Jeff Dowtin, Oshae Brissett, Gur Lavy and Marciano Santos (not to mention Lonnie Walker who won’t play in the game due to back pains).

Out for Jerusalem are Chris Johnson, Jeremy Morgan, Or Cornelius and Tarik Philip, In are Cassius Winston, Roie Paretzky, Anthony Lamb and Dmytro Skapintsev.

No one was going to fool anybody by thinking that end of the evening the team who hoisted the trophy was as if they had taken home last season’s championship.

There was no lineup out the door for tickets and the fans arrived as tame as ever as the league’s pregame music filled the more than half empty arena thirty minutes to tip-off. No one was going to be fooled, this was a glorified preseason game with some pomp and circumstance and everyone knew it.

It’s also probably why the split between the two fan bases was 80% Maccabi and 20% Jerusalem. However, it would end up being the Reds who would be the ones celebrating by the end of the evening with a 84-79 victory.

The game began with dunks by old faithfuls Justin Smith and Jaylen Hoard while Lamb and Sorkin scored for their respective squads as the latter nailed a 3-pointer at the buzzer to end the first quarter by giving the yellow-and-blue a 22-17 lead after ten minutes of play.

The Maccabi fans were unstoppable in the first quarter as they cheered to their hearts delight with the chance to see their heroes just ahead of the Euroleague season which gets underway next Tuesday night against Anadolu EFES in a game that will be played at the Moraca Arena in Podgorica, Montenegro.

Jimmy Clark had the hot hand to begin the second quarter as he drilled home a triple and added an acrobatic reverse layup forcing Yonatan Alon to call a timeout, which resulted in a pair of 3-pointers from Jared Harper. John Dibartolomeo faked Cassius Winston out to drain his second one from deep while Tamir Blatt and Jeff Dowtin Jr. both of which had been quiet in the first half scored to give Maccabi a 42-35 advantage at halftime against a Jerusalem team that looked a bit out of focus as the period came to an end.

Jerusalem will open up their EuroCup campaign next Tuesday in Hamburg, Germany and are the favorites to win the competition which would give them a spot in the following season’s Euroleague just as Hapoel Tel Aviv did last year. With reining MVP Jared Harper back in the saddle for the reds, the possibility of taking it all is definitely in the cards and boy would it be interesting to see not one, not two, bit three Israeli teams in the continent’s top league.

Jerusalem came out of halftime with fire in their eyes as Winston along with Khadeen Carrington and his Israel National Team teammate Nimrod Levi all scored as the game started to get a bit chippy with offensive fouls on both sides but it was Roi Paretzky wide open in the corner who knocked down a 3-ball to give the reds a 61-56 lead after thirty minutes of action.

While this may only be a preseason game, the play in the third quarter showed a ton of grit by Jerusalem who more than made up for their lackluster first half as they frustrated Maccabi to no end for the entire ten minutes as one quarter remained to see who would walk away with the Super Cup title.

Carrington scored a quick 8-points to give Jerusalem some breathing room, Harper added baskets of his own while Sorkin tried to keep Maccabi in striking range, Carrington, Harper and Lamb gave the Reds an 11-point lead with roughly two minutes to go. But the yellow-and-blue weren’t finished just yet as Clark put in points and Dibartolomeo nailed a classic John D 3 to get Maccabi to within a pair of points with just seconds remaining but Carrington closed out the game from the charity stripe to put the finishing touches on the 84-79 win to take home the Super Cup.

The Jerusalem fans stood as one to celebrate the victory and while it was not as sweet as it would have been had the win been on June 15th, it was still one more over its rival and perhaps the start of a special special season that they hope will end with a ticket in hand to the Euroleague along with the league championship and State Cup title.