Will Rayman encapsulated everything that Hapoel Tel Aviv was not in Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game one 96-75 win to take a 1-0 championship series lead. The Israeli forward was hustling, diving, running, jumping and doing anything and absolutely everything in his power to help the yellow-and-blue take the victory. Offensive rebounds, defensive boards, pushing, shoving, instigating, antagonizing was the way to dominate a reds team that had none of that extra mojo in them.

It was clear that Oded Katash’s team had the desire, will and just wanted the win that much more badly than Dimitrios Itoudis’s side. Whether it was 50/50 balls, second chance points with 25 for Maccabi and only 7 to Hapoel, points off of turnovers 29-6 for the yellow-and-blue or points in the paint 48-34, it was all one way traffic for the hosts in this contest.

Just look at the turnovers, Vasilije Micic committed 8 of them while Maccabi as an entire team had only 8 for the game. The statistics in this case say it all, but that is not always the fact, especially when you look at Rayman.

If you look at his stat line you’ll see zero points, 0/4 from the field to go along with 4 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block to go with a +1 and an efficiency rating of just 1. Glancing at the boxscore one would never understand the impact that Rayman had in those twenty minutes as he sets the tone as a starter for Katash’s crew.

That’s because what Rayman does rarely shows up on the stat sheet, it’s the intangibles that he brings to the court every single game on any given night.

Coaches dream of players that can bring what Rayman brings. Itoudis, for example would have been thrilled to have seen some of his players with the same passion and heart that the Rayman showed.

These intangibles sometimes are overlooked, but these are the things that win championships.

Certainly talent is important and both teams have plenty of that from the likes of Jaylen Hoard, Jimmy Clark and Roman Sorkin for Maccabi while Yam Madar, Jonathan Motley and Micic all have plenty to offer. But in this game and in the case of championship matchups, it’s got to always be much more than talent, it has to be all of that along with the kitchen sink.

Nothing more, nothing less and in a best-of-five game title series you’ve got to win three games to hoist the trophy, not one and not two but three.

Rayman knows that it’s back to square one on Thursday night when Maccabi tips off for game two on the road against Hapoel at Yad Eliyahu, “It’s the most important game because it’s the next game. It’s a home game for them, they’re going to feel comfortable so it’s important for us to come out with even more focus the next game as it’s easy to play in front of our fans. But game two is going to be a little different and we have to make sure we’re locked in, we got to brush this win off. It’s basically 0-0 again, so we just have to stay locked in and ready to go.”

Maccabi will no doubt have to bring their “A” game to the court in order to go up 2-0 and put a stranglehold on the series, but of course, that’s always easier said than done.

“We got to keep taking it one game at a time and it’s a long series,” Rayman said. “I thought we played pretty solid and we kept them in front of us in this win but we have to do that for the entire series. We have to take them out of the game, the whole series. We have to be solid and not look further than the next play.”

One of the main challenges that Maccabi is going to face in this series is the fact that Katash is playing primarily with an 8-man rotation due to injuries to Israelis Tamir Blatt, Gur Lavy and TJ Leaf which has left the yellow-and-blue shorthanded. Since game one was a blowout, Maccabi was able to play youngsters Oren Sahar and Tamir Gold in the second half of the fourth quarter. But in reality, Rayman knows that it’s himself along with seven other guys who will be playing the bulk of the minutes and if the series drags on to a fourth or fifth game, Hapoel with a deeper bench could have an advantage.

It’s clear though that Maccabi wants to wrap this up as quickly as possible and if they can take the game two win, they’ll be just one step away from yet another league championship.

“We played the whole year for this,” Rayman exclaimed. Everyone wants to play in a finals game. So when we’re on the court, no matter how many games, how many minutes, we’re all going to give our 100%. If we’re tired, we’re going to ask for a sub. We got nobody with a crazy ego on the team. So we’re going to keep on going strong and giving our all. We can rest in two weeks. Right now you can’t be tired, we want to win the championship.”