We’ve seen this story before. Maccabi Tel Aviv going up by double digits in Euroleague action and suddenly seeing the lead “Slip Slidin’ Away” just like the 1977 Paul Simon hit song. Not only does the yellow-and- blue see their advantage disappears, they fall behind and then also end up losing the game in fine fashion.

Whether it has been Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Barcelona, Monaco, Fenerbahce and now Bayern Munich, Oded Katash and his charges were unable to hold onto the lead yet again and fall in Germany 98-93 aft having been ahead by 15 points in the third quarter. With the defeat, Maccabi saw their record drop to 4-11 which inevitably should end any thoughts of advancing to the Play In for the 2024/25 season.

There were some highlights in this game as Wenyen Gabriel continued his fine play from the Tel Aviv Derby that took place earlier in the week as well as Jaylen Hoard who is scoring at will, but let’s face it, Maccabi as a whole is a nice team with some good players who play solid team basketball but are just not good enough from A-Z to compete at the top of the Euroleague this season. It’s hard to accept, but those are the facts right now in black and white.

With that Katash’s squad playing their hardest every second on the floor, one can see that they are a solid club but when the snowball begins to roll down the hill it picks up speed very, very quickly and they just aren’t good enough to stop it.

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first half was just a spectacular display of basketball. The ball moved nicely, shots were being made, players drove to the hoop and after the opening frame the yellow-and-blue had taken 24(!) shots and while they only went 2/10 from beyond the arc, their 2-point percentage was right up there as they scored 30 points over ten minutes.

The pace of play was frantic end-to-end and just exciting play across the board, but there was just no way they would be able to keep it up and that would be especially true when Maccabi didn’t have an injured Jasiel Rivero and Roman Sorkin whose stepfather passed away.

Eventually the pace caught up to Maccabi and Gordon Herbert’s stars, Carsen Edwards, Shabazz Napier, Devin Booker and Andreas Obst had her lunch and ate it too as they took the lead an near relinquished it as they notched the win.

Following the game, Katash could have pressed the rewind button from the media availabilities he’s had over the past couple of months as his comments were unfortunately more of the same.

“It was a really high tempo game and for 25 minutes we controlled the game and played the right way,” the Maccabi bench boss began. “We knew that Bayern is a high tempo team and first in the Euroleague in 3-point attempts and 3-pointers scored. We lost our mind but I liked the way we played and competed. At the end it’s the details and habits and we are missing that. We need to keep learning and we are using these games as a learning process. This is not the first time this happened when you lose a game after you are up, but we have to keep our heads up and learn from these games. We were a bit naive.”

Usually the preseason is where the learning process takes place and many of the small details ad habits are ironed out during that time and in the first month of play. Maccabi is now in month #3 and they are still in preseason mode which is a massive problem is you want to be able to compete and not just be a participant.

There are no participation trophies in professional sports.

“It’s really tough,” Katash continued. “We travel a lot so we miss a lot of practices but we also built this team from zero. We lost some main players 4-5 of them from last season. When you build from zero it’s tough. We try to get better and improve on gameday morning at the shoot around. We come up short but what keeps us together is the character. We have really good people. We have to remember that things can be worse.”

No question things can be worse on the court and off of it as well but thankfully for Katash’s sake and that of the club is that the players are all of very high character without exception which keeps them together as a unit and that means they will continue to put in an effort, battle game in and game out and try to improve in order to get back into being a team that can compete. But once again, do they have enough quality, quantity and talent to do so?

There is just not enough depth which has been seen time and time again this season because when a number of players are not available for whatever reason, Maccabi doesn’t have enough players to come in a fill their places. Only 11 players dressed for the yellow-and-blue against Bayern Munich as Omer Mayer wasn’t even listed as a 12th player. Rafi Menco didn’t play while Will Rayman put in 7 minutes and David DeJulius played 8 while eight players played over 11 minutes of action aa piece in this game.

Wenyen Gabriel spoke about the lack of depth but yet Maccabi is still fighting and taking lessons, “We were shorthanded but we definitely went out there and fought. We had a really good first half and we let up a bit defensively, overall I think it was a good effort from the team. We had some good aggression out there and we can take that forward.”

Jaylen Hoard knows that Maccabi needs to be playing as best as they can and find a way to win some of these tight games, “We came out well and had a great first half. The second half they made a run and made big shots. We have to stay together and keep fighting. We have a lot going on and we can make excuses but we don’t and we are going to try to play hard and get these wins. I feel our energy is better since the Derby and for the most part we played a great game. The guys are getting more comfortable and used to the system, we just got to keep our heads up and to not feel to down on ourselves and i think we will be fine. We have had a few games recently and we have another tough game on Saturday.”

Saturday after Shabbat ends, the yellow-and-blue will head to the Toto Arena for an Israeli league date with Hapoel Holon as Guy Goodes’s team now is playing with 5 imports instead of four which offers the bench boss a bigger rotation. This may be as good as a chance that Holon will have to catch Maccabi on an off night. But truth be told, everyone thought Maccabi would fold up like a cheap suit against Hapoel in the Tel Aviv Derby after two brutal Euroleague losses in a double week, but that was as far from the truth as Katash’s team did everything right to dominate a one-sided affair.

Goodes spoke about Maccabi immediately after winning in Beer Sheva, “I really focused on Beer Sheva the last few days as they are a very tough team and we had to worry about them. Maccabi is going to come in after some tough games that they had this week and they have their own issues. In addition, we have a very big game at Nanterre next week in Champions League play and really in all truth every game for us is important.”

There is no question that the bigger game for Goodes and Holon is the one in France as they close out the Champions League group stages and will try and position themselves as best as possible, is it will be interesting how the bench boss will approach this game. He also wants his squad to be able to jell together with a pair of brand new players in Brendan Adams and Mike Davis Jr. who had achieved chance to play together for the first time earlier this week in Beer Sheva.

So that will most definitely be something to watch as both of the guards looked good in the southern capital while one other player who will capitalize on the 5 Holon imports being listed every game is Dakarai Tucker. The swingman had played in only 5 of the team’s 8 games prior to the Beer Sheva contest where he scored 27 points while hitting seven 3-pointers along the way to his terrific performance.

“Most definitely that’s going to be a real big game for us,” Tucker said. Especially to see where we are with the 5 Americans we have now. If we could just come in, play good basketball play together, play smart the everything else will take care of itself.”