Maccabi Tel Aviv has had a difficult season to date to say the least as the yellow-and-blue have struggled both on and off of the basketball court primarily due to the war and its effects on the club as a whole.

Head Coach Oded Katash’s squad currently sports a 4-13 record after the first round of Euroleague games which places them in 17th, the second to last spot in the standings just ahead of Alba Berlin after having had two straight seasons where Maccabi was just inches away from a Final Four berth going to a decisive 5th game in the quarterfinals of the competition in both years. In the Israeli league, the yellow-and-blue are in 2nd place with a 9-2 record but lost to Hapoel Jerusalem convincingly earlier in the week.

There have been a number of players who have come and gone for a variety of reasons since the summer when Maccabi was in the process of putting together their roster and that has not helped the club as they try to find their consistency. The yellow-and-blue will look to try and find their way and make a positive mark in the continental competition’s second half while also trying to defend their domestic league championship, it certainly won’t be easy. Maccabi is fully aware that both Reds, Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Jerusalem have designs on knocking Katash’s crew off of their perch, however, the franchise still has a few tricks up their sleeve.

In order to learn more about what the club has been dealing with and what they will be attempting to do going forward in order to rectify the current situation that they are in, David Blatt, the Head of the Basketball Committee at Maccabi Tel Aviv held a special media session and spoke about the above challenges in the shadow of war and also clarified some of the issues that the yellow-and-blue having been dealing with on an ongoing basis this year.

“We are all going through some challenges here and we are in the middle of a process and not at the end,” Blatt began. “Many things will still happen and will also become more clear as time goes by.”

After last season, Maccabi lost four of its star players due to the war in Wade Baldwin, Lorenzo Brown, Bonzie Colson and Josh Nebo with the first three under contract. With that, the club began to rebuild its roster which was no simple task when a quartet of critical players depart.

But with that, management was able to sign Jordan Loyd as its go-to-guy who was going to be Maccabi’s anchor. However, following Iran’s ballistic missile attack in the fall, Loyd departed the country and a player with a tremendous about of upside in Saben Lee was signed.

The issue with Lee was that the contract that was signed did not force the guard to come to Israel and could play just in the club’s Euroleague games. While it was a good attempt to try to fill in the gap, eventually the situation was untenable and was just not going to work for Katash as Lee returned to his Turkish team.

“We were unable to find players to replace four leading Euroleague players,” Blatt explained. “They are players of the highest levels of Europe and we needed to look to bring in players that had a lot of upside and begin again from scratch. These are things that all teams have to do when they are building a brand new team. Some things worked and others didn’t. It’s not easy to find the right mix of players and we just weren’t able to do so. The four players who left were central players with some signed to contracts but we have to now rebuild.”

“We brought Saben Lee in after Jordan Loyd’s departure because we needed to fill a big hole,” the former Cleveland Cavaliers coach continued. “It was written in Saben’s contract that at the beginning of his term he didn’t have to come to Israel and if things improved hopefully he would decide to do so. This didn’t happen and we couldn’t have him play in the Israeli league and he couldn’t practice with the team during the week. This was difficult for everyone and ultimately the decision to part ways was the correct one.

“There are times when you have to take a risk and we paid the price for it. The hope was that we would be able to strengthen the team right after we lost such an important player in Jordan Loyd. It just didn’t happen. Saben helped us win a couple of games in the Euroleague and perhaps if the hadn’t been the issues with the war things could have turned out differently. If someone needs to take responsibility for this, I will. There are no guarantees in life and some players that we looked at went to other places and it hasn’t worked out as well as they would have liked. Sometimes we have to accept the criticism that we received on this issue.”

Maccabi has had to play all of the Euroleague game since October 7, 2023 outside of Israel which has obviously not been a help in the club reaching the goals that normally they would be aiming for. Despite that, the yellow-and-blue did advice all the way to the quarterfinals last season where they lost to the eventual champion Panathinaikos and tried their best over the offseason to put together a team that could be competitive this campaign. But to date it has just not worked out the way everyone associated with the club would have liked it to.

“We want to be and hope we will be as competitive as possible in the Euroleague,” Blatt explained. “As our record indicates, we are not near the top of the Euroleague and there are some seasons that are just like this especially after the last two years, where the team was not only competitive but was so close to getting to the Final Four twice. This season that’s just not the case. I don’t want to start making up excuses. Things happened, difficulties that didn’t allow us to be where we were the last two seasons when we were also Israeli league champions and so close to the Final Four. We are not going to hang our heads and cry, we are going to make decisions that will help us in the long term due to many reasons which I won’t go into all of them now. But we want to compete at the highest of levels.”

The yellow-and-blue have been a bit of a revolving door this season with players coming in and out including a move that just occurred this week when center Wenyen Gabriel was sold to Panathinaikos and big man Trevion Williams from Alba Berlin was brought in.

“We released Wenyen and brought in Trevion for a number of reasons but first of all was to strengthen the team in both the Euroleague and Israeli league. There are times when you make a trade in sports not to save but to strengthen your roster for the present and the future and that’s what we did by signing Trevion. With a few more moves we will be as competitive as we can be as we try to reach the vision that Maccabi is aiming for.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv is known to always want to bring in the best Israeli players and that is something which is still extremely important and critical to the club and its success. One of the county’s top products in Yam Madar had been playing abroad the last few years and eventually signed with his former club in the country, Hapoel Tel Aviv. With that, there were many rumors as to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s interest and involvement in trying to bring him on board which Blatt finally made it clear that the reason for him not being in yellow-and-blue was totally financial.

“We have a very good Israeli squad and not everyone can be at Maccabi as there are only spots on the roster. We knew what was going on and when there is a player available of Yam’s stature we are involved as well. But specifically with Yam it was a financial issue, the expectations and the demands from his people were just not realistic for us, it was not realistic for us whatsoever. Anyone can ask for what they want and that’s fine. But for some to say that we weren’t involved and didn’t consider Yam is not fair and not responsible. Whoever said it doesn’t know what they’re talking about and even brought it up in a rather insulting way. I’ve been through too much in my career to get too excited about it.”

Head Coach Oded Katash has not had an easy time managing this season and that is to be excepted with the roster situation that he has had to deal with, but regardless he has handled teh challenge as best as any bench boss would be able to explained Blatt.

“Oded Katash is one of the best coaches that Maccabi tel Aviv has had ever. Oded is coach and person who is so respected and central to this system. We just haven’t gotten to the place we need to for the squad to reach it’s potential. The coach is not the one who is to blame for this and right now we have to work hand in hand, encourage him and help him out in order to get through this situation. It’s certainly not just Oded whatsoever.”

The war has also not helped Maccabi attract American and import players to come and sign in Israel which is understandable, but this of course creates a very tough situation in finding top talents to help out the squad. While the yellow-and-blue have been able to bring in some of the players that they wanted to, others have gotten away, but that doesn’t mean that the club won’t continue to rebuild.

“We have issues trying to get American or other imports players due to the situation,” Blatt said. “It’s not easy and we are trying our best to deal with it. We want to be as competitive as possible but there is also a lot of competition out there for the players that are available. We did get some players that we wanted and others not. We are looking to strengthen the squad and it may not be immediately but for the long term and down the road.”

“Back in the spring we wanted to bring players for those that we knew were going to leave and we just had such a tough time. We were able to bring some players in but not everyone we wanted. Over the past few months, some players left and some have been injured but we are still going to try and strengthen our team. What is going on in the country is even more difficult outside of sports. The battle is not over and we will continue on. We have to keep trying to find the solutions that will be able to help us. We are working on these things every single day. I am not going to stop for a second.”

Another major issue that has plagued Maccabi this entire season has been injuries which has kept out one player after another throughout the first few months of the campaign. Not having a full squad, especially when there happen to be one Euroleague game after the next wasn’t going to be helpful to say the least.

“I want to see our team healthy which we haven’t been yet,” Blatt explained. “This has been the most difficult part for us. In our last few games we are dealing with very tough teams and we just ran out of gas. It’s bad luck and bad timing, everyone wants results and I accept that, but when you get to the end of the games recently it’s as if the car has no gasoline and it just stops. This isn’t an excuse but the truth. The month of December has been very tough in terms of travel and the amount of games and we are doing it without 20-30% of the squad. I thought this would be a tough month and that is what happened.”

“But to complain and be down just isn’t the way, we have to take ourselves with both hands and do things to strengthen the roster and within management, this month was not good. We have begun a process and we will continue that. We can only go up from here, we have good players at Maccabi Tel Aviv and a management team who have been through a few things over time. To be depressed is just not what we are going to be, we will do what we can to improve all aspects of the club. I am very positive about the continuation of the season and I am here to help everyone out.”