Maccabi painted the city of Tel Aviv yellow-and-blue as they downed Hapoel 97-79 to,take the first Derby of the season in style. Oded Katash’s squad controlled the the pace of play from the outset as Jaylen Hoard punished his former team time and time again throughout the game while Rokas Jokubaitis helped give Maccabi a 47-42 advantage at halftime. Marcus Bingham, Yam Madar and Tomer Ginat tried to keep Dimitrios Itoudis’s team close but Levi Randolph and Tamir Blatt made their presence felt in the second half to take the 18-point victory.

Hoard led all scorers with 26 points, Jokubatis added 18 points while Randolph and Sorkin each scored 11 points in the win. Madar scored 16 points, Bingham put in 15 points and Ginat scored 11 points in the loss.

Maccabi welcomed Hapoel in the Tel Aviv Derby for basketball supremacy across Israel as arguably the two best teams in the nation as the Euroleague squad matched up against the EuroCup side in an all out battle at Yad Eliyahu.

The stage was set as Reds owner Ofer Yannay’s all-star studded squad faced the back-to-back Israeli league champs with 2x Euroleague championship Head Coach Dimitrios Itoudis on one sideline and former Israeli star Oded Katash on the other.
 
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For hours prior to game time, fans from both teams milled around the arena, eating, talking, singing and dancing as they waited to welcome their heroes that would take to the floor on this night.

When Yannay was spotted it was as if the king had come down to greet his subjects as TV cameras marched in front of him in order to get the perfect frame of the Reds owner nodding, smiling and grinning that the scent of a victory for his team was in the air. Yannay has invested millions of shekels into the club in order to produce a winner and try and find a way to play in the Euroleague, but the owner is finding out that it’s not as easy as 1-2-3.

The Hapoel team bus pulled up and dropped the players off by Gate 9 of the arena and as they stepped off the coach, some with earphones, some without, all had the faces of warriors ready to do their new master’s bidding as Dimitrios Itoudis would lead them in his first Derby as head coach.

The Greek tactician was unveiled by Yannay in a festive press conference just a few weeks ago and his fingerprints are already all over Hapoel as his side came into the Derby after giving an old fashioned walloping to Joventut Badalona last week in EuroCup play after having been clipped by Ulm in Itoudis’s first game in charge. One of the new coach’s projects will be to get Jonathan Motley, the club’s star center back up to speed after having left the team for a month as he looked to find a bigger and better contract with another team. But Yannay would not give up in his fight against his big man due to his contractual obligations and was able to keep the center as part of his squad.

As the fans filed into the arena the energy and atmosphere was already electric as both camps cheered and sang to the top of their lungs. When the players raced onto the floor for pregame warmup the temperature went up a few more degrees as the area an was getting heated in both senses of the word. For the players it was easy to see their excitement and enthusiasm as this would be the first time this season they would be playing in front of such a big crowd because the Euroleague home games are all being played in Belgrade due to the war that has enveloped the country since October 7, 2023. In essence this game was equivalent to a Euroleague game.

Both teams got off to red hot starts as Patrick Beverley scored a pair of baskets as did Marcus Foster for Hapoel Tel Aviv while Rokas Jokubatis was a one-man wrecking crew as the Reds led 19-18 midway through the first quarter. John Dibartolomeo drilled home a pair of triples, Jaylen Hoard added points, Marcus Foster also scored from deep, but a putback from Marial Shayok gave Maccabi Tel Aviv a 31-26 lead after ten minutes of play.

Dimitrios Itoudis’s squad came right back with a layup from Bar Timor, a dunk from Marcus Bingham and points from Yam Madar but after a quick timeout Oded Katash’s crew came storming back with dunks from Wenyen Gabriel and Hoard plus points from Levi Randolph, and Hoard went from deep as well to give Maccabi a 42-35 lead with five minutes remaining in the first half. Hoard continued to score at will with 12 straight points for the yellow-and-blue as he sent the Maccabi fans into a frenzy with a double digit lead, but Ish Wainright and Bingham pulled the Reds to within 5-points, 47-42 at halftime.

Maccabi, who were swept in a Euroleague double week by Paris and Barcelona left their fans in much concern and that took an even worse turn when the morning of the Derby they found out that their Cuban center Jasiel Rivero would be out of action for 4-6 weeks with a hamstring tear. That only made things from bad to worse for the yellow-and-blue faithful. Without their inside presence on both ends of the floor, a big hole would need to be filled and with the way Wenyen Gabriel had played this season, there were plenty of doubters that Maccabi would be able to come away with a positive result.

However, Gabriel stepped up and put in a fine first half especially defensively as he caused all kinds of issues in the paint for the Reds big men but also opened up the outside for Hoard on the offensive end as the ex-Hapoel man poured in 18 first half points against his former team and their fans who booed in droves.

Hoard kept finding nothing but net as the third quarter got underway, Bingham did the same at the other end, Levi Randolph went from the outside and inside, Tamir Blatt and Bar Timor traded triples but one more from Blatt gave Maccabi a 65-55 lead after thirty minutes of action. But the most concerning moment of the evening was when Beverley limped off with a thigh injury and went to the hospital for an MRI.

As the fourth quarter got underway, Madar and Roman Sorkin scored for their respective clubs, and Ginat put in 5 straight points to try and keep Hapoel hanging around but Randolph and Sorkin came back from deep, while Blatt, Shayok and Jokubaitis polished off the win.

Shimon Mizrachi, the yellow-and-blue chairman has seen a few Derbies over the course of his reign of more than 55 years as he led the club to one trophy after the next which included 6 European championships with the first coming in 1977 and the last in 2014. After last season’s league title, which was a 2-1 series win over Hapoel he was showed on video celebrating with the players and saying how Hapoel hadn’t won in 55 years and they will have to wait for another 55 years to take a league championship.

While Maccabi didn’t win the championship they did send a message to Hapoel that despite putting together an all-star squad they have plenty of work to do if they want to dethrone the champs and this is what sports is all about.