Quick Hits
1) While Hapoel Tel Aviv has been successful on the court in the Holy Land and keeps winning in the Israeli league, the Reds have had all kinds of issues off of it. The latest soap opera has been Johnathan Motley’s decision to clear out his locker and fly out of the country where it was thought that he would be signing with Red Star Belgrade. The Serbian side denied any interest in the player and now it seems that he was looking to leverage himself to get a salary boost. But now he has disappeared seemingly off the face of the earth and no one seems to know where he is. Dubai? Belgrade? USA? Who knows. What is true and what isn’t at this point is moot. The bottom line is that stories like this as well as the reactions by so many of the principles creates a 3-ring circus around a team that has lofty goals and really its the last thing that Hapoel Tel Aviv and Israeli basketball needs to be dealing with.

We also know that Antonio Blakeney made his debut and looked good as he graced the court at the Drive In Arena while there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding Joe Ragland and where his future may lie after he wasn’t registered yet again to play in a league game which gives one the indication that the star guard may not be in Stefanos Dedas’s plans for the long term with Hapoel.

Going back to Motley, while Patrick Beverley hasn’t mentioned his departure to date (but he does have a podcast coming out soon… where maybe he will), Dedas most certainly has as he is looking to see his other center Bruno Caboclo take yet another step forward, “I had two equal solutions and I tried to use the best possible player for some of the games. Bruno was better against Beer Sheva and he finished in the starter role. In Buducnost he was very good and this was a challenge that I had to face, but now I don’t have that option, he has to play until we get someone else. I saw that he gave a very good effort on both sides in the Afula game and he is in good shape. He will step up.”

2) Hapoel Jerusalem got a shot to the system when reports came out that guard Speedy Smith wants out of the reds, but that is more than understandable due to not being the top dog anymore with Jared Harper playing the point. Smith had been a critical piece to Jerusalem’s success over the past two seasons and it just seems that with Harper on the team there isn’t enough ball to go around and that’s really too bad.

Yonatan Alon and even Dan Shamir who is employed by the team needed to find a way for the two guards to co-exist on the court and to the naked eye it should have worked with Harper playing the 1 and Smith playing the 2 while getting plenty of time with the ball, but it’s been clear that this isn’t the head coach’s plan and he is looking at Harper as the man to lead the team. Less than 24 hours after the Jerusalem win at Hapoel Gilboa Galil, the club issued a statement that Harper has an eye injury and would not be playing in their EuroCup game against Venezia on Wednesday. It’s not clear as to how he suffered the unjust and eye issues can be extremely serious so they aren’t going to take any chances which means that… you got it, Smith is back in the drivers seat.

However, there are reports that Smith will be heading to Turk Telekom sooner rather than later and that Payton Willis who was just released by Tenerife and has played in Israel in the past is headed back to the Holy Land in his place.

The merry-go-round doesn’t end.

3) Hapoel Holon have a huge Basketball Champions League game coming up at Igokea a team that they beat the last time the two teams tipped off in Hungary. The purples will look to move to 2-2 in BCL group stage play after starting out 0-2 with losses to Wurzburg ad Nanterre. The German side is sitting atop the standings with a 3-0 record while the other three teams are all sporting 1-2 records with Guy Goodes’s squad in 2nd place. The top team move son to the Round of 16 group stage while the 2nd and 3rd place teams will take part in a Play In series with the winners joining the 8 group leaders in the next stage of the competition.

Immediately after Holon had easily disposed of Elitzur Netanya, both Goodes and Netanel Artzi spoke about the challenge that lies in front of them.

“The home loss against Nanterre did us damage. The group stage games are an issue with the BCL as each game has so much importance and you have to come into the next one at Igokea really focussed. On top of that it’s a long trip with flights and then a lengthy 5-6 hour bus ride. Igokea plays well at home and they know us as we know them. But it’s really in our hands as we have it play well as we did in this game against Netanya but we also know that a road game is never easy.”

Artzi also chimed in about the BCL campaign, “We need to being energy and focus. We learnt that from the last game and we needed to be there in order to understand what we need to do. We have to be aggressive and focus on the small things, but most importantly bring the energy, be there and play our style of basketball.”

4) Over at Netanya, Idan Avshalom’s team were really nowhere to be found in a game that was very similar to Holon’s matchup against Hapoel Jerusalem the prior week. There have been numerous blowouts where one team or another just didn’t put in their best effort and this was definitely one of them. However, the diamond city squad brought back a player who had a wonderful run with the club and in Israel in big man Bryce Washington.

The center will slot perfectly into the team that he had once played with along with some very familiar faces which includes guard Itay Moskovits. With Washington’s addition, Netanya will have a hard working big that can not only score and defend but also make those around him better. Since leaving Israel where he played last with Hapoel Galil Elyon, also with Moskovits, Washington has plied his trade in Japan and then in Mexico.

5) Nes Ziona needed to put together some sort of string of wins and they just didn’t do it as an underrated Hapoel Galil Elyon knocked them off at home. Amit Sherf must have been super disappointed in his team that they couldn’t chalk up another home win after having taken care of Hapoel Gilboa Galil the week prior on a Friday afternoon with tons of fans. With a 1-5 record, Nes Ziona did lose to three heavyweights in Hapoel Jerusalem, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Ramat Gan, but they needed to be able to beat a team that has been a nomad since the start of the war.

For Hapoel Galil Elyon, yet another win gives Guni Izraeli’s squad a 3-2 record in what has been one of surprising stories early on in the season. Marcus Carr and Lukas Goldenberg have been stellar while the club just added Rawle Alkins who played for Nes Ziona last season. Add to that a resurgent Lior Carreria, Tomer Assayag and Lennard Freeman, the Galilee team that has made its temporary home in Hadera will cause issues for a number of teams this season.