Maccabi suffered their first home loss of the season Thursday night, going down to Barcelona 86-79. The Yellow & Blue now sit 8th in the standings with a 4-3 record, however they could move down to 9th if Valencia beats Monaco in Spain Friday evening. Here are a few of my reflections from the round 7 clash.
The Good: Wade Baldwin IV’s first quarter
This season’s Maccabi team has developed a habit of opening games slowly, but tonight they started aggressively and with energy. After last week’s dismal effort against Baskonia, right from the get-go they looked like a different team.
“It’s always disappointing to lose, but I liked the way we played, and I liked the effort,” Maccabi coach Oded Katash said after the game. “I really liked the way we competed today.”
There has also been plenty of criticism of Maccabi’s inability to get to the line this season, however that aggression and energy translated into more opportunities in the paint, and the team had 26 free throws over the course of the game. One of the main catalysts for that and the overall aggressiveness was Wade Baldwin IV (16 points and 3 assists), who in the first quarter scored 7 points and drew fouls on two separate occasions while attacking the basket.
“You can’t question our fight tonight,” Baldwin said after the game. “I think everybody that stepped on the floor gave everything they had.”
While he didn’t end his game on such a positive note (more about that below), there is a lot of good things that he can take away from his performance tonight, and the fans will hope that he can continue to channel that same positive energy as the season progresses.
The Bad: Third quarter defensive lapses
Maccabi went into the locker room at half time with a 43-40 lead, courtesy of a steal from Alex Poythress (10 points and 6 rebounds) and a three from Bonzie Colson (6 points and 4 rebounds) to end the quarter. However, from the beginning of the third quarter there was an obvious lack of focus and communication from Maccabi’s players. Three separate plays set the tone for what was to come in the second half.
First, after Maccabi went up 47-42, with 8:23 left in the third quarter, Nikola Kalinic (5 points and 4 assists) was left alone in the corner on offense. Poythress went to defend Setac Sanli (4 points and 3 rebounds), who found the open Kalinic. Instead of taking the shot for three, Kalinic drove to the basket for an easy open dunk. The Maccabi players didn’t seem to know what to do and they seemed completely perplexed as to how a player could be so open.
Less than one minute later, Tomas Satoranksy (9 points, 6 rebounds and 6 assists) found Nicolas Laprovittola (19 points, 5/10 from 3) open in that same corner, who hit the 3 from behind the arch.
Almost immediately after that triple, Laprovittola was again given too much space and he made another 3-pointer.
The Kalinic dunk started a 20-10 Barcelona run over the next seven minutes, and although Maccabi reduced the deficit at the end of the third quarter to one point, many people in the crowd sense from the pattern of defensive lapses that it would not be Maccabi’s night.
“They made a big shot, open threes, and that was our downfall, from my opinion,” reflected Lorenzo Brown (18 points and 5 assists).
“You can’t undermine a Barcelona team that’s well-coached and has a great system, and players made plays,” Baldwin acknowledged. “We had some defensive lapses, gave up some layups and some open threes.”
The Ugly: Dubious decisions and unwise reactions
It’s not unusual for the Yad Eliyahu crowd to shout profanities at the referees in unison when decisions go against Maccabi, but there were some decisions tonight which many will question. The ugliest of them were the first, fourth and fifth fouls called against Baldwin.
The first was with 2:17 left in the first quarter. Mike Tobey (14 points and 6 rebounds) was taking his second of two shots from the foul line. Baldwin moved Kalinic as the ball went through for one point. Surprisingly, the referees called a foul on Baldwin.
“You don’t often see that,” the commentators on EuroLeague TV analyzed. “Well, Baldwin gets called for a foul on a rebound. The thing about this is, there’s no advantage or disadvantage for Barcelona, because the free throw goes through. You’d expect the referee to kind of turn a blind eye to that.”
Then with 4:29 left in the fourth quarter – and after Maccabi clawed back from a 62-73 deficit to 67-73 – Cory Higgins (15 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists) drove to the basket and was fouled by Baldwin, who seemed shocked by the call, as he (and the crowd) thought that he and Josh Nebo (9 points and 4 rebounds) worked well together to block the shot. Analyzing the replay, the EuroLeague TV commentators also sounded a little perplexed: “Baldwin gets a lot of leather, and Nebo gets nothing but leather!”
After Higgins made both free throws, the ball went down the other end. It was then Higgins who stole the ball from Nebo as the latter went to put the ball in the basket. It was a great steal, but Baldwin immediately threw his arms up in the air. While continuing to protest the call as the ball came back down the court, he was called for his second technical and fifth foul for the game, which ended his evening in disappointing fashion – especially given that he was arguably Maccabi’s best player.
“Mystery things happened during that period, and we lost the game,” Baldwin responded when asked about the last quarter. “I found it ironic on one end, Higgins got a free throw opportunity. I think Josh [Nebo] was playing extremely hard and had a bit of contact down low, it prevented his dunk. And that was it.”
“We know Wade, until now he’s great for us, and very emotional and it’s difficult for him,” Katash said. “I can say until this game, he’s fought very hard to control this. There are things that we don’t want to happen, simply because we need him. I think he’s the first to know this, and he needs to continue to be focused like he does daily. He’s also a young man who can learn and develop. I think from this he can step-up. ”
Up Next: Away against Partizan Belgrade
After Maccabi’s round 3 game against Hapoel Haifa was postponed to January 3 due to the National Team’s games against Slovenia (in Israel) and Sweden (in Sweden) this weekend – games in which Rafi Menco and Iftach Ziv will likely feature – the yellow and blue now have just under eight days to prepare for their next game, an away EuroLeague fixture against Partizan Belgrade (3 wins and 4 losses, 11th on the EuroLeague table). Partizan had their own troubles tonight, losing to Olympiacos in Greece 87-58, scoring only 4 points in the last quarter.
It’ll be Maccabi’s first of two trips to Belgrade this month, as they will return only 6 days later to play against Red Star. It will be the first time the teams will meet since Partizan beat Maccabi 72-70 in 2014 in the round of 16 of the EuroLeague, but it was a season in which Maccabi ultimately were ultimately crowned champions – Maccabi’s most-recent Euroleague Championship.
This will also be the first time that Maccabi will come up against Yam Madar since March 2021, when he was wearing the red of Maccabi’s cross-town rivals, Hapoel Tel Aviv. That does not necessarily mean that he feels any animosity towards Maccabi, as he revealed earlier this week that he was actually a Maccabi supporter during his childhood. “I grew up in Israel, so for sure Maccabi was the team,” Madar said to television sports network Sport Klub in an interview earlier this week. “I grew up watching them taking the Euroleague in Milan [in 2014].”
Partizan has won two games in a row at home, and especially after tonight’s loss, they will want to continue to build on their positive home record, while Maccabi will want to turn around their record away from home to take what they will see as a winnable game on the road.
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