Maccabi Tel Aviv will look to wrap up their 58th Israel League Championship on Thursday night when they visit Hapoel Jerusalem with a 1-0 lead in the best-of-3 series. The yellow-and-blue are not interested in entertaining a third game back at Yad Eliyahu on Sunday and are pulling out all of the stops to ensure that they sweep to the title.

While there hasn’t been a team since the 2000 Maccabi Tel Aviv who won a league championship on the road, this year’s version will look to break that 25 year drought and hoist a trophy at the Jerusalem Arena for the second time this season after having captured the Israel State Cup back in February.

However, the Reds will have their fans, 10,000 strong behind them in game two as they will look to even up the series. While it won’t be easy, Head Coach Yonatan Alon can feel good about his team after they came oh so close to stealing game one on the road in a game that saw many an open and uncontested shot miss the mark time and time again at the end of the third quarter and at the beginning of the fourth.

Jerusalem will no doubt make some changes to try and get Khadeen Carrington more involved and they will certainly tighten up the defense, but there’s no reason to think that Maccabi will be able to just walk into the capital city and do as they please.

“I think we gave them a little too much freedom to play,” Alon said. “We have to be much more aggressive and determined, they did manage to control the little things and not miss free throws (28/29). As for Khadeen, it’s on me, I need to do a better job with him. We will do everything we need to as this is a game that could get us to within 40 minutes of the championship. We understand the situation that we are in, now we have to see how it plays out on the court.”

Oded Katash has seen his team lose game of the final series both last season and in 2023 at the compact Drive In against Hapoel Tel Aviv before pulling out the championship in the third game. Luckily for the Maccabi maestro, the Jerusalem Arena is not the Drive In and while there will be 10K fans instead of 3K, the facility by Malha is a much bigger a spacious arena and one that they have already won a trophy in this season.

“The preparations we are doing is the same as for any game even though it’s a championship game,” Katash began. “You have to approach it as a must-win game. It’s not going to be easy, but we don’t want to go back to Game 3. In order to be successful, we’ll need a higher level of performance than the first game. What won us the game was the rebound advantage. I am sure that they saw the same thing and we’ll have to be consistent in what we do.”

Maccabi’s rebound advantage was clear as day ahead of the series as they have been the best team in the league controlling the boards game in and game out. Not only do they out-rebound the opponent, they do so on both sides of the court, offensive and defensive and when they don’t snatch the rebound they go after the ball and snatched it back time and time again in game one.
But, Maccabi also has to be aware that the reason they won the game was one miss after the next from deep by Nimrod Levi, Carrington and Jared Harper who just came up short in tying the contest up with a last second heave after he hit one from deep in game three of their semifinal series to knock out Hapoel Tel Aviv.

“Winning the championship is always a success and that’s perhaps the main goal. It would be an achievement in itself, especially after the season we had and especially in the circumstances where the league here has improved a lot. As for Harper, there were good things we did and things that need to be refined. He’s an excellent player, but there are a lot of players who are capable of doing us harm. We’ll try to limit them more.”

One final note on game two that no one wants to see occur after having gone through it in game one, no overcalling the game by the referees. A 40-minute game should not take over 2:20 to play. Yes, two hours and twenty minutes. The officials called foul after foul after foul on both sides and it was tough to take. How many times do they need to go to the monitor and analyze a play and how many fouls will they call in order to limit the effectiveness of a player and again that is for both teams.

Fans come to see the game and the players on the court decide it, not the refs. No one comes to a game and pays good money to see a whistle fest all night long. 54 free throws and 48 fouls by both teams combined is just way, way too much. Let the game flow and let the spectators enjoy the action.