There’s no question that Panathinaikos Head Coach Ergin Ataman tried to steal the show after his team fell to Maccabi Tel Aviv 91-87 in dramatic fashion. As he sat in the postgame press conference surrounded by Greek journalists who were ready to pounce, the veteran bench boss looked to take the pressure and spotlight off of his players who literally collapsed and threw the game away in the final minutes of the game and place it all one himself.

“If we will not go to the Final 4 I will not be at Panathinaikos next year,” he blurted out before he stormed off, leaving everyone and their thoughts in the dust.

Ataman moaned and groaned about the refereeing to which he certainly had some legitimate points and he spoke about how the officials committed larceny against his squad, “Everything went against us and we lost the game and lost the advantage and destroyed 7 months work that we made in the regular season.”

The act that Ataman put on no doubt was similar to Sasa Obradovic’s last year after his Monaco side lost game one to the yellow-and-blue but eventually went on to take the series 3-2 primarily due to the Principality’s team holding home court advantage. The Serbian took the pressure off of his players which is exactly what the Turk did with his as Ataman knows full well that even though this is a 5 game series, there is plenty of basketball to be played.

As both teams will now ready for game two, Panathinaikos will once again have the home crowd behind them, 20,000 strong in fact that will push their side to earn a split of the opening two games and head to Belgrade where they could in fact take the series or send it back home to OAKA for a game five. Maccabi will try with all of their might to find a way to snag a second game in Athens and put a stranglehold on the series.

However, Oded Katash and his crew have plenty of work to do in order to chalk up another road win which will not be an easy task especially if Wade Baldwin who picked up a left leg injury is not going to be available or able to play at his usual pace.

In fact, Maccabi has never swept the opening two games of a series that began on the road nor has any visiting team won a deciding 5th game away from home, so although the yellow-and-blue picked up the game one victory, they have an awfully long way to go. Punching their ticket to the Final Four in Berlin is still ages away.

Maccabi won game one in Monaco, lost game two and three and was victorious in game four, but game five back in the Principality saw an experienced team know how to juice out a tough win and move on.

“This is a similar situation and last season,” Katash explained. We had a team that was built from zero. We didn’t have a lot of players that had been in playoffs, but we learnt something. The injury to Wade will be an issue to see how we will advance in this series, it is critical for us. I hope it won’t be that serious and I hope that a team that has been together for two years will know how to do things together. We aren’t going home to Tel Aviv with the fans and the energy that they give us, but we have plenty to work on and improve.”

Obviously, Katash and crew are in the best possible position, winning game one on the road in a fabulous basketball atmosphere that only a fanbase and arena like OAKA can create which was also appreciated by the players who haven’t had the opportunity to play in front of their home crowd since the first game of the Euroleague slate back on October 5th.

“It was a tough win for us, an impressive win in an amazing atmosphere,” Captain John Dibartolomeo exclaimed. “It’s fun for us to play in this type of atmosphere, we missed it this season. I’m proud proud of us for the win but there are two more. I think that we can play with the best in the Euroleague we have to keep our horizons short and focus on Thursday.”

The thought that Maccabi is even in the playoffs is something that Katash, the players, staff and of course fans who are back home in Israel should relish because this isn’t something that can be taken for granted due to the ups and downs that the team experienced since the morning of October 7th.

“It’s a crazy situation since Oct 7 and it is special,” Katash said. “But we try to ficus on basketball and we are trying to make the people back in Israel happy. We have gone through a lot of difficulties and hopefully things will change quickly for our people. We don’t want war, we want peace. It is special to get into the playoffs and under these circumstances it’s even more special. But at the end of the day we have to focus on basketball and that is what we will really try to do for the next 48 hours.”

The success of the team is because they have been able to stay together and focus as a group, play for one another and understand what needs to be done in order to get to the Promised Land. While the starters may be the “stars” of the show, the bench has made an amazing contribution to the success of the club from top to bottom and that was the case in game one as Maccabi came back to take the improbable victory.

“We made really good adjustments, especially in the 4th quarter,” Jake Cohen said. “But I think it was a gutsy performance. We got huge huge plays down the stretch by so many different guys, Josh made free throws, Zo made a big 3, AC with a steal, everybody on the court contributed had good energy and contributed.”

Bonzie Colson also chimed in following the game, “We stayed together and showed resiliency, we never got down on ourselves and we got back to our principles on both sides of the floor and we have to keep this momentum for Thursday and hope that we can do even better. I enjoyed playing here, the atmosphere is amazing and the fans are great. Throughout this year we obviously haven’t had fans, so it was a good win.”

Without the bench as we have seen all season long, Maccabi wouldn’t be in the position that they are in, but of course, without a star in Wade Baldwin the yellow-and-blue may not be able to find a way to Germany and play for the title. Although the star guard said that he will be ready to go, there is still doubt that this will be the case.

The bottom line is, can Maccabi win game two with or without Baldwin. That is going to be the question until the ball is thrown up into the air for the tipoff.

Regardless, Cohen understands full well that game two will be no cakewalk for Maccabi, “They have really good players, a really good coach and a great crowd. We have to build on what we did well in this first game and improve on what we didn’t do well because there is going to be things that we can correct.”

With hopes high, can Maccabi be stopped? Is there a limit to what this yellow-and-blue team can do as they look back at history knowing that the franchise won Euroleague championships back in 2004 and 2014.

As Colson said to end off one of the great nights in club history, “There is no limit.”

בונזי קולסון: ״מה הגבול של הקבוצה? אין גבול״#SRAthens pic.twitter.com/MtptPppHB6

— Sports Rabbi (@thesportsrabbi) April 23, 2024