Maccabi Tel Aviv looked like a chicken without a head this time around as they fell to Baskonia 95-85, with the score not even being as close as it looked like to drop the yellow-and-blue’s Euroleague record to a pitiful 4-12 with one game left in the first round of contests. While Oded Katash’s team kept the clash close very early on, once Markus Howard started to break out of his season long shooting slump (these things always seem to happen to Maccabi) Pablo Laso’s team grabbed a double digit lead by the end of the first quarter and never looked back. This was certainly not the way that Katash wanted to see his crew just come a part at the seams so quickly and so easily.

The Maccabi bench boss spoke about the poor body language and energy that the team displayed which led to their downfall in this game. That along with the fact that Baskonia was hitting one shot after the next after the next didn’t help matters for Katash’s squad that once again came up short in what is a Euroleague season that the yellow-and-blue will want to forget.

The truth is that once Euroleague games return to Israel which will most probably be in October 2025, the fans will put this season far, far away from one that will be recalled at a later date and they will just chalk it up to a year that took place abroad due to the war and that will be that. Sure the fans are upset now and rightfully so, but in the long term this will be a campaign that will never really be looked back at.

This is not the 2016-17 Maccabi season of Sonny Weems and Co. a season that will go down as one of the club’s most disastrous or the year prior when the yellow-and-blue ended up playing in the EuroCup because they were so bad.

No. This is a season that will be filed away as one where the players were good guys and they tried their hardest, but without fans and any significant revenue, well there was no reason to really spend any type of big money to succeed in Europe.

Sure, Maccabi wants to be competitive in the Israeli league and they have been to date as they do have a good enough team to win the championship despite Hapoel Tel Aviv’s spending spree. Management just feels that this squad, which has already been able to separate the Euroleague losses to the domestic league (re. the Tel Aviv Derby shellacking of Hapoel), is good enough to win in Israel and that’s going to have to be fine for this year.

The club has cut costs as have most industries in the country due to the war. Once the country sees better days ahead (which are hopefully right around the corner), management will get back to building a team similar to what was the past two seasons when they went deep into the Euroleague playoffs and featured the likes of Wade Baldwin, Lorenzo Brown, Bonzie Colson and Josh Nebo to go along with a solid Israeli contingent.

As painful as it may be for Maccabi fans, they are just going to have to accept that fact and rally behind the team at home as we all saw against Hapoel Tel Aviv just over a week ago.

The Euroleague season is done.

Maccabi needs to begin looking at what players they can bring in for 2025-26 and that starts with players in their own backyard similar to Jaylen Hoard and Levi Randolph, who were both excellent signings and could continue in next season’s version of the team. Look at what is available on the other Israeli teams and then move along from there.

The last thing Hapoel Jerusalem ever thought was going to happen did in their 82-80 loss to Hamburg in EuroCup play as they could not field 5 players on the court to end the game and had to settle with 4(!). Yes you read it right, four players finished off a game that they could have easily won. With a 9-man rotation injuries along with 3 players fouling out left Yonatan Alon’s team in the unenviable situation and also the laughing stock of European basketball.

The capital city reds have been missing healthy, quality players as one player after the next have been injured since even before training camp began which left the squad decimated. Jerusalem does have a 7-5 record and have won plenty of games but at some point management needed to realize that the squad was going to tire out and not be able to play at the level they had been a month ago despite having lost players like Justin Smith, Austin Wiley and Nimrod Levi. They just don’t have a enough depth and quality to properly compete right now even though they added Derek Ogbeide and Tarik Phillip.

The fans are edgy, the sports director tried to fan the flames in an X “Space” meeting just the other night. But what the fans want to see is s team that will be able to compete at a high level which they are still unbelievably doing. However, the gas is running out and is on low, very low at this point to the dismay of the faithful. The fans see a lot of employees around the Arena and they also see investment in the youth as there is a relationship with Leumit Team Ramat HaSharon, but not much more going into the team.

A pair of writers in the Israeli media took specific fact to placing the blame squarely on owner Matan Adelson, I’m not so convinced that he is the address here. Yes, ultimately the buck stops with him and perhaps fans think that he should be pouring money like water into his team ala Ofer Yannay at Hapoel Tel Aviv, but there is a Leumit team that the big club is associated with and perhaps that’s a place where Jerusalem needs to look to shore up their squad. That would be the normal thought process but if the team isn’t capable of helping the senior squad out then why invest in that project if you are working with a limited budget.

Why is Hapoel Jerusalem in the EuroCup where they will have an 18 game regular season compared to the BCL which has 6 + perhaps the Play In and then another 6 in the Round of 16. What was the reason to move now and put a strain on your budget during a war season?

Who is making these decisions, is it the CEO Alon Kremer, Sports Director Dan Shamir or Head Coach Yonatan Alon? Is it Gal Mekel or Matan Adelson? Is it a group decision?

Hapoel Jerusalem looks like a team that needs to really get their house in order and also find a way to market the team better. There is so much potential as it always has had from 20 years ago when I first made Aliyah until today. But for one reason or another, no one seems to be guiding the ship and taking them closer to meeting their potential.

That is really the bigger problem that the team has experienced, there seems to be no true leader, one with a vision and game plan to take the team to where they need to go.

And that’s just too bad.

Maccabi Ramat Gan deserve a tremendous amount of credit for advancing to the BCL Play In stage with a 3-3 group stage record. Shmulik Brenner was able to get his guys in gear to come away with a slim 1-point, 94-93 win over VEF Riga to get into the second phase of the competition in impressive fashion. Ramat Gan has been the toast of the league the past two seasons since returning from the Leumit League and they have proven all the critics that they can compete and compete very well against all-comers.

Brenner’s veteran, hard working squad has also showed that it’s not just the Amin Stevens and Isaiah Miles’s of the world but also the Yahel Melemed and Dori Sahar’s that can make an impact. Sahar, who came up through the ranks of the Maccabi Tel Aviv youth department has made strides this season and arguably had his best game as a professional with 12 points and 5 rebounds in 21 minutes to help his team to the victory.

Sahar began his professional career back in 2018-19 and was with Maccabi for three seasons which was followed up by two years at Bnei Herzliya and now he’s in first campaign with Ramat Gan. I was actually at his debut back on February 12, 2019 when he came on in the final minute of Maccabi’s 83-77 win at Nahariya in a game that saw scouts a plenty in attendance to watch Deni Avdija play (2 points in 10 minutes).

With a number of players unavailable including Drew Crawford who stayed back in Israel with his wife who is due any day now, Sahar grabbed the opportunity with his career highs in minutes and points which is exactly what you want to see from the 23-year old.