Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Hapoel Tel Aviv 94-90 in the deciding game 3 of their series to win its 56th Israeli league championship and first since 2021 on Tuesday night. Wade Baldwin IV (22 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists and 1 block), Lorenzo Brown (22 points, 2 rebounds and 7 assists), Roman Sorkin (13 points, 9 rebounds and 2 blocks) and Alex Poythress (12 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assists) led the scoring for the champions, while J’Covan Brown (31 points, 2 rebounds and 8 assists), Tomer Ginat (14 points, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 assist), Xavier Munford (13 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists) and Jordan McRae (12 points, 1 rebound, 2 steals and 1 assist) battled hard for Hapoel.
Here are a few of my reflections from the game.
The Good: The Backcourt
Maccabi’s Brown and Baldwin have arguably the best backcourt in Europe this season. Brown was named to the All EuroLeague First Team and Baldwin was named to the All EuroLeague Second Team, Baldwin was named to the All Winner League Second Team and he was also named the MVP for the Winner League finals series. On Tuesday night, they showed themselves as keys to Maccabi’s championship.
Brown had 11 points in the first quarter alone, getting the team back after a shaky start, with Hapoel scoring the first 7 points of the game before Brown scored Maccabi’s first bucket nearly two and a half minutes into the game. He also started the scoring off in the third quarter with a huge 3-pointer to get Maccabi out to a 7 point lead after 30 seconds.
That quarter was huge for both Baldwin and Brown, with Baldwin scoring 10 points and 4 assists and Brown adding 5 points and 1 assist. They also helped get other players into the game in a quarter which Maccabi won 33-26, including a memorable pass from Baldwin to Jake Cohen (3 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist and 1 block) who then put up the alley-oop for Sorkin with a little under three minutes remaining in the quarter.
Then, after Maccabi gave up a 15 point lead in the final quarter to let Hapoel get ahead by 2 points with a little under three minutes remaining in the game (more about that in The Bad below), it was Baldwin and Brown who steadied the ship to score the last 11 points for Maccabi to clinch the championship.
“We felt at the beginning of the game that we didn’t start well, we slowly got into the game” Maccabi coach Oded Katash said. “We managed to control a bit, but the seven-eight minutes until the end of the game, whenever their run started, we simply felt that we needed one or two minutes to finish the game and there the pressure appeared again. But we showed character, I’m so proud of the players, the staff and they deserver it.”
“It feels great,” Brown said after the game. “I’m mores happy for my teammates. Everyone is happy, the organization is happy, so that’s what it’s about.”
Brown experienced some discomfort in the third quarter, but he knew that this wouldn’t affect the team with the talent he had with him: “I twisted my ankle in the third quarter, so I kind of slowed up after a while. But I’ve got Wade Baldwin – what else can you ask for?”
“The game got into switching defense they had Onuako guarding me and Lorenzo, the two best guards in the EuroLeague and in the Israeli league for pretty much the entire season,” Baldwin said. “We were missing, we were missing, we were missing. Our team was confident, we ended up still getting stops, I was able to hit a big shot and finish the game on free throws and continue to play on defense.”
Up until the shots at the end of the game, Baldwin had made 3 of 8 free throws, which made for some nervous Maccabi fans in the crowd when he went to the dying minutes of the game. However, he made 4 of 4 in the last couple of minutes to prove why he is one of the best players in Europe.
“Take a deep breath, say that this is for the championship and shoot the shot – that’s all that was on my mind,” Baldwin said of the last plays of the game. “This team has had confidence in me putting the ball in the hole all year, I have confidence in myself and that’s what I do.”
The Bad: The Last Quarter
After their big third quarter, Maccabi took a 75-64 lead into the final 10 minutes. When Bonzie Colson (9 points, 9 rebounds, 1 steal, 2 assists and 3 blocks) hit two free throws a little over two minutes into the final frame, the yellow & blue fans could taste victory. Hapoel didn’t get the message and what followed was a 17-0 run over the next five minutes of play, with Maccabi suddenly finding itself down 83-85 after J’Covan Brown hit a 3-pointer with a little under three minutes remaining, it seemed like the reds were going to win their first Israeli league championship since 1969 in enemy territory – and everyone watching at that point could have been forgiven for thinking that would happen. As we know, Maccabi recovered and lifted the trophy at the end of the night, but it could very well have gone the other way if Hapoel had continued with the momentum that they built over that five-minute period.
“I didn’t know it was 17!” a surprised Colson responded when asking about Hapoel’s run. “Like I said, they’re a talented team. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we stuck with the game plan, our leaders all the way this whole year have been great, making the right decisions and they came through.”
“I don’t think I can say the words that were going through my head,” Cohen said of the tense period in the last quarter. “It was not fun. But then you have someone like Wade Baldwin who, makes a big shot puts the team on his back and that MVP is well-deserved because of what he did in those last two minutes.”
“It definitely got me up on my heels, it was tough,” Jarell Martin (2 points, 2 rebounds and steal) said. “But our team, we dug down deep and when it mattered we came through and we fought and we conquered.”
The Ugly: Off Court Dramas
Off the court, there have been lots of dramas in this series surrounding physical violence, verbal abuse, lighting flares inside stadiums and other unwanted distractions from the game. While last night the game wasn’t delayed, there were still incidents of fans attacking players (and players reacting), flares being ignited and curses being shouted out by fans from both teams. I don’t want to get into the details, because I’m sure there’ll be a lot to discuss over the summer break on this topic, but it really put a stain on the end of the season, which should have been all about celebrating what Israeli basketball has to offer.
“Let’s put aside all the things that happened around the game, of course we’re against all physical and verbal violence,” Katash said of the everything that happened off the court. “We need to learn – as a league, Israeli basketball needs to know to clean up these things. Because what happens on the court – and the respect between the players and between the coaches – deserves a cleaner atmosphere. The basketball here is great and fun. We need to make conclusions, learn from it and clean it up on both sides.”
The Israel Basketball Association and the Winner League, as well as the clubs, will have a lot to work on over the summer. Let’s hope that there is a gameplan in place by the time the 2023-24 season tips off.
Up Next: Off Season
As Maccabi goes into the offseason celebrating, we will be bring you news of developments regarding the roster and everything else that you need to know in preparation for next season. In the meantime, there’s still plenty of basketball for us to enjoy, including the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket in Israel and Slovenia, which begins on Thursday!
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