Israeli basketball teams fall in Europe but everything needs perspective

Oct 25, 2024 | Holyland Hoops

It was a rough week for the Israeli teams in their respective European competitions as Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Jerusalem and Hapoel Tel Aviv all came up short in their games while the only team to pick up a win was Hapoel Holon as they won their first Basketball Champions League clash.

Maccabi in Euroleague action was a disaster out of the gate as the yellow-and-blue fell behind 26-7 to Zalgiris by the end of the first quarter making the final thirty minutes one helluva uphill battle that head coach Oded Katash’s crew just couldn’t come back from. Jerusalem saw their contest go up in smoke with 6 minutes left in their eventual loss to Cluj as a 13-0 run to break a 67-67 tie fit the bill for the Romanians. Hapoel Tel Aviv saw their chance to record a victory go south when Anthony Lamb helped Trento to a 20-5 run to end their game and send the reds to their second loss of the competition.

Marcus Fostet – Photo Credit: Hapoel Tel Aviv


Three Israeli teams competing in the top two competitions and before you know it each one found their way to find a way to lose and send their respective fanbases into a tizzy. In fact even Holon’s supporters are now shaking their heads when a report out of Spain had Marcus Bingham, their star player heading to Valencia which would leave the purples with one major headache.

Maccabi Tel Aviv now sit with a 2-3 record in Euroleague play with a Double Week coming up with games against Fenerbahce and Real Madrid, both of which are Final Four candidates. The yellow-and-blue are in trouble with a number of injuries to key platers in Tamir Blatt, Rokas Jokubaitis and Wenyen Gabriel to name a few.

Katash said after the loss to Zalgiris that Jokubaitis should be back soon and that’s good news going into such a critical week where a point guard is a necessity especially after seeing what kind of disaster zone their offense was without one against Zalgiris. Without a true floor general Maccabi had one issue after the next in the opening period trying to create and score which left them with only 7 measly points after ten minutes of play. There is no team that’s going to win a game when you score under ten points in a quarter and that set the tone for one awful evening of basketball.

Saben Lee – Photo credit: Elad Goldstein, Maccabi Tel Aviv


“We are missing our two main point guards to injuries,” Katash explained. “Saben Lee is great for us but he is not with us the whole week and it was tough to practice. We can’t play our normal game and we have to find a way to cheat the game and you really can’t cheat in basketball. We have a lot of excuses as I told the players at halftime but I said we can’t find excuses, we have to keep our heads up and keep playing.”

The other massive issue that Katash mentioned and one that he is trying to manage is that the club’s brand new signing Saben Lee has not yet come to Israel due to the ongoing war. Apparently when the yellow-and-blue signed the guard that was part of the deal as Katash explained and by not having Lee with the team not only means one less player for domestic league games but also means that the squad can’t practice together and help Lee become an integral part of the offense and defense structure.

“The circumstances are really tough,” the bench boss said. “We knew when we signed him that he and his family would not come to israel for the near future. We are really happy that he is with us and we all agree that it would be better for all of us to be together. Hopefully, we can live in peace and go back to normal, but that is the situation for now. We can’t plan too far in advance and it’s day by day and week to week.”

Stefanos Dedas and Patrick Beverley – Photo Credit: Yehuda Halickman


Over at Hapoel Tel Aviv, Head Coach Stefanos Dedas is under mega pressure to produce results with an all-star studded lineup of players. While the reds don’t have any issues with players not wanting to come to Israel because owner Ofer Yannay opened up the pocket book, there are still some problems trying to find the right rotation and mix of players for them to succeed.

Patrick Beverley is the main man no matter how he is playing and will get plenty of minutes if he is scoring or if he isn’t. With that there Dedas has a headache as to who else he will give minutes to and how many. Johnathan Motley, Ish Wainright, Marcus Foster, Tomer Ginat and Bar Timor are locks but after that there is still some questions with how much playing time Jor Ragland, Ben Bentil and Noam Yaacov are going to get both in Europe and in the Israeli league, if any.

Bentil has been for all basic purposes wiped out of the rotation and per reports has been told to look for a new team. Ragland is getting minutes but is in a situation that he is not used to which is that of not being the top dog as he was in every place he has landed including Hapoel Holon where there are rumours he may head to very soon.

Noam Yaacov – Photo credit: Yehuda Halickman


For Yaacov, continental playing time has been almost none and while he has played some in the Israeli league, being loaned from Euroleague team ASVEL Villeurbanne for limited paying time is not what he had envisioned. There have also been reports that he has been told to look for another team and while plenty of Israeli clubs would be happy to take his services but really his future needs to be in Europe for a team that will give him the keys to the car and allow him to run the offense,

There have been rumours that Yam Madar who is now with Bayern Munich would return to Hapoel Tel Aviv and in fact there were meetings that took place but at this point in time a Madar reunion is really out of the question with Israeli tax issues on income earned purpose of the country being a major sticking point. So the chances of seeing the Boston Celtics property back on red is right now slim to none.

Ofer Yannay – Photo credit: Yehuda Halickman


While these are all professional team related issues that Hapoel Tel Aviv is dealing with, there are also off court challenges that need to be ironed out between the owner and the non profit organization that also has shares of the club. The long time chairman Rami Cohen just stepped down from his post as so many of the loyalists that worked hard to being the team to the levels of being competitive over the past few years have all moved on due to disagreements between the two main parties in control of the team. A move to the larger Yad Eliyahu arena has been challenged by the non profit as they want to remain in the smaller Drive In Areana but Yannay citing revenue issues wants the team in the larger facility in order t9 sell more tickets.

There never seems to be a dull moment at Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Over at Hapoel Jerusalem, there still seems to be some things that need to be ironed out. While there are a good group of players that stayed from last season, in Speedy Smith, Khadeen Carrington, Chris Johnson, Yovel Zoosman and Or Cornelius there are also newcomers in Jared Harper, Austin Wiley and Jeremy Morgan that are still trying to mesh together. That’s without a doubt head coach Yonatan Alon’s main job and it’s not an easy one.

Khadeen Carrington – Photo Credit: Yehuda Halickman


Carrington has been in and out of the country and lineup due to personal issues, Smith who had been the dominant go to guy guard has somewhat taken a bit of a backseat to Harper who has been superb with the ball while both are still trying to find the best place to get Wiley the ball for him to be most effective on offense.

With that, the capital city reds picked up a EuroCup loss to drop their record to 2-3 as concerns mount that the team will not click as fast as it needs to while also not being able to compete against the cream of the crop, namely Hapoel Tel Aviv, a team they lost handily to just a couple of weeks ago.

Holon picked up their first BCL win to move their record to 1-2 which is good news for Guy Goodes’s team who also had guard Elijah Mitrou-Long back in the saddle after being out for a few weeks. The purples looked like such a much better and balanced team with Mitrou-Long in the lineup it was night and day from the squad that had played the last few weeks.

Marcus Bingham – Photo Credit: Yehuda Halickman


However, with the good for Holon comes the bad and during the war there seems to be plenty of that across the board as Valencia, who are playing in the EuroCup are about to poach Marcus Bingham, one of the best import players in the league. The big man has a great shot from the outside, can dominate the inside and has just been superb every since he and Goodes were together at Hapoel Haifa.

There have been plenty of ups and downs early on this season and there will certainly be plenty more with the conflict between Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran just widening with unfortunately no end in sight.

Photo credit: Yehuda Halickman


The one positive is that even though the war continues to rage on, Israeli sports fans still have plenty to discuss, mull over and just look forward to as the Israel Defense Forces allow us to live our lives as they battle for our freedom on the front lines and for that we all need to be super duper appreciative.

Sometimes it’s tough to put things into proportion the proper perspective but sports and basketball is a luxury at this time and we have so, so much to thank the teams, clubs and players for the escape that they provide during these challenging times.

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