“The referees let them get away with physicality, especially in the fourth quarter. I’ve never seen anything like it. For two minutes, we couldn’t even get a pass through. When a team becomes overly aggressive and the other team gets sent to the line on every possession, it becomes very difficult. It’s a real shame.”

“We played well enough to win here, and we also missed shots down the stretch that we had made in the third quarter. We made mistakes too, failing to close things out properly in the final minutes.” On his players’ fatigue, he added: “I felt it, and the plan was to distribute the minutes more evenly. But once Jaylen and Wade both got going, we let them play. That’s also a problem heading into the rest of the week.”

“Every game is crucial, including today’s, which is why there was so much frustration. The next game against Valencia will be extremely difficult. They will put a tremendous amount of pressure on the ball.”

The quotes above from Oded Katash, following a dramatic road loss to Barcelona on Tuesday, are real. Read them carefully and they will seem more or less perfectly logical. You might even assume they were said following Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game at the Palau Blaugrana last night, just before the team prepares to face Valencia in two days’ time on Thursday.

Only the more eagle-eyed among you will notice the reference to Wade (Baldwin) and realize that these quotes were not actually made this week. And the Jaylen in question is not Hoard, but Adams. Roman Sorkin and Bonzie Colson, who wore yellow in the past, played for Maccabi again this time, while Josh Nebo has switched sides.

These quotes were made after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s road loss to Barcelona during the 2022/23 season, a game in which the team impressed and controlled much of the action but came away empty-handed, feeling hard done by the referees. Sound familiar? It was almost exactly the same story as yesterday’s 90-87 defeat to Barcelona.

Dig a little deeper, and you will also find quotes from Katash criticizing the officiating after a loss to Barcelona in Belgrade during the 2023/24 season. Meanwhile, Bonzie Colson said something after that game that could just as easily have described the latest encounter, “In games like these, you need to be perfect on both ends of the floor to win. We improved in the way we started the game, but we were less successful with rebounding, playing tough defense, and other things. We’ll go back, watch the video, and learn from it. It hurts, but that’s part of the game. We have to learn from it.”

You can always debate whether the referees decided a game and this time, too, an objective assessment provides grounds for arguing that several officiating decisions contributed to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s defeat. But setting aside the question of who was right and who was wrong, the bottom line is that Katash once again delivered comments in the same vein, reflecting the mood surrounding the team.

Maccabi Tel Aviv drops to 1-4 in EuroLeague play this season. Regardless of which calls went their way or against them, Barcelona found a way to win on the court, with Justin Robinson drilling the game-winning three-pointer with 1.6 seconds remaining. Bonzie Colson’s final attempt fell short.

But more than the officiating, the real story was Yam Madar.

Maccabi’s point guard, who had just starred with 17 points and a career-high 22 performance index rating in the EuroLeague victory over Armani Milano in the previous round, took things to another level, setting new career highs with 22 points (5/6 on 2-pointers, 3/5 from 3-point range and 3/4 from the free-throw line) and a performance index rating of 31. He also drew a career-high eight fouls.

Madar scored 18 points in the second half without missing a single shot: 5/5 on 2-pointers, 2-of-2 from beyond the arc and 2/2 from the free-throw line. Above all, he produced several magical minutes in the third quarter.

Maccabi went into halftime with a 42-40 lead, but Barcelona opened the second half with an 8-0 run to go ahead 48-42. With eight minutes remaining in the third quarter, Madar scored a 2-pointer. 39 seconds later, he scored another. Forty seconds after that, he knocked down a triple. 28 seconds later, he hit another one from beyond the arc to put Maccabi ahead 52-50.

That was 10 points in 1:47, remarkably similar to his start against Hapoel Galil Elyon, when he scored 10 points without a miss, going 2/2 on 2-pointers and 2/2 from 3-point range in just 2:12 after the tipoff. With Madar in full beast mode, the basket seemed to turn into an ocean.

It is not just about the raw numbers and in some cases, the numbers do not tell the whole story at all. Madar finished with a minus-nine plus-minus rating, that statistic we sometimes use to support an argument and sometimes dismiss as meaningless. Madar was simply bigger than the game itself. Unfortunately for him, all the work he put in seemed to disappear into the sea.

When his team needed him, he repeatedly took responsibility, displaying a soft touch from midrange and beyond the arc. Even when it seemed that every call was going against Maccabi, he still managed to draw offensive fouls. But the night ended in heartbreak. Madar was physically spent toward the end, heading to the bench several times because he was playing through injury. Despite everything, he returned for the final play, only to be limited to inbounding the ball.

The last thing Madar and Maccabi need right now is another injury. As has become customary, he tried to calm things down after the game, reminding everyone that there was another game on Thursday.

Another player who deserves praise is Iffe Lundberg. The Danish guard opened with a pair of 3-pointers before quieting down as the game progressed. When it mattered most, however, he held his nerve at the free-throw line. After drawing a foul on a deep 3-point attempt in the final 30 seconds, he made all three free throws to tie up the game.

Lundberg reached double figures in EuroLeague scoring for the first time this season, finishing with 13 points, including a perfect 7/7 from the free-throw line. That was exactly the number of free throws he had made in total throughout the season before this game. The last time he missed a free throw in the EuroLeague was 252 days ago. He had previously recorded games in which he went 6/6 and 6/7 from the line, but he had never been this productive at the stripe.

Still, a closer look reveals that, alongside the positives, there were plenty of things that ultimately undermined Maccabi from within.

The team shot 9/18 from 3-point range in the first half, a 50% clip and finished the game at 12/27, or 44.4%, excellent numbers overall. However, that means Maccabi went just 3/9 from deep in the second half. Remove Madar from the equation, and the team shot just 1/7.

Forwards Bonzie Colson and Oshae Brissett combined for 15 points and 20 performance index rating points, 10 apiece, in the first half. They were nowhere near as effective after the break. Colson, who finished with 12 points, added just four points and six performance index rating points in the second half. Brissett remained on seven points, improving his rating by only one point. Colson did, however, record four steals, matching his career high in the competition.

Maccabi also got a season-high EuroLeague performance from Daniel Theis, who reached double figures for the first time with 11 points and posted a team-best plus-10 plus-minus rating. On a night like this, though, perhaps the team could have found a way to get him more involved than his seven field-goal attempts, particularly when so many of his teammates failed to step up.

Jimmy Clark scored nine points but fouled out with five fouls. Keaton Wallace contributed, among other things, four assists without a turnover in the first half, but did not add to either total after the break. He finished with five points and unfortunately, was one of the players who could do little to prevent Robinson’s game-winner, alongside Brissett.

Jaylen Hoard scored four points and committed three turnovers. Roman Sorkin recorded two blocks but was held to two points on 1/5 shooting in 14 minutes, while T.J. Leaf also scored two points. The shots Armando Bacot likes to bank in off the glass simply would not fall this time; he went 0/2 from the field and finished with a -4 performance index rating in two minutes. Will Rayman, meanwhile, appeared only at the end of the first half.

On the other side, Kevin Punter poured in 19 points.

Maccabi previously won on the road against Valencia, which was led by a diminutive but talented point guard named Jared Harper. Colson starred in that game with 17 points, 12 rebounds and a performance index rating of 32.

This time, Maccabi faces a team that is 4-1 and that built a 28-point lead during the second half against Olympiacos before somehow managing to lose by five in overtime. It is also a team featuring a diminutive but talented point guard named T.J. Shorts.

Can it happen once again? Is it possible?

We’ll know the answer at around 11:30pm on Thursday night.