The last time I attended a EuroLeague game was on October 5, 2023. Maccabi Tel Aviv entered the 2023–24 season with cautious optimism. After the heartbreak of falling in Game 5 against AS Monaco—despite leading midway through the final quarter—the mood around the club was one of quiet confidence. The roster was stable and the stars were aligned – and with Lorenzo Brown, Wade Baldwin IV and Bonzie Colson returning, it felt like the foundations were in place for another deep run.

The season opened at home against Partizan Belgrade. Baldwin was unavailable, yet Maccabi delivered a commanding 96–81 victory. It was everything a EuroLeague night at Yad Eliyahu is supposed to be: noise that rattles the ribcage, a crowd unified by color and purpose and that unmistakable Tel Aviv electricity that visiting teams feel the moment they enter the arena.

No one in that building had the faintest idea how different life would look 48 hours later.

Since October 7, Maccabi’s “home games” have been played in Belgrade, a surrogate home forced by war. While Serbia embraced the team warmly, nothing replaces the connection between Maccabi and its city, its people, its history. Players perform; fans endure. And for almost two full seasons, both have done so under circumstances no sports club should ever face.

The basketball suffered too. In 2023–24, Maccabi clawed its way into the play-in, only to bow out to the eventual champions, Panathinaikos in a bitter five-game battle. The 2024–25 season was even harsher: 11 wins in 34 games, missing the play-in entirely. The dream of returning to European glory — last achieved in 2014 — seemed further away than ever. Baldwin and Colson ended up lifting the EuroLeague trophy last season, but not in Maccabi’s yellow and blue, but rather the yellow and blue of Fenerbahçe. For Maccabi fans, it was salt in an open wound.

And yet, the longing to come home never dimmed.

Now, 798 days later, Maccabi Tel Aviv will once again step onto the parquet at Yad Eliyahu, facing ASVEL Villeurbanne. On paper, it’s a matchup of two teams languishing at the bottom of the standings — Maccabi with four wins from 14 games, ASVEL with three. Under normal circumstances, it would barely draw a headline.

But circumstances are anything but normal.

This game isn’t about standings. It isn’t about playoff chances. It isn’t even about basketball in the usual sense.

This game is about coming home.

It’s about a fan base battered but unbroken, a club that has carried the weight of a nation’s emotions and a country trying to piece together a new version of normal after nearly two years of trauma. When the EuroLeague voted to allow games to return to Israel in October, I cried — real, uncontrollable tears. It felt like a small piece of our identity had been restored. Sport doesn’t erase grief or heal wounds, but it gives us moments of escape, unity and pride when everything else feels uncertain.

On Thursday night, I know those tears will return. Win or lose — though of course, I hope for a win — I’m ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with 12,000 fellow Maccabists, belting out Hatikvah with a voice that will probably crack from emotion. I’m ready to cheer, to shout, to finally feel that familiar roar echo against the rafters.

No basketball game can rewrite the past two years. But this one can remind us that we are still here. Still cheering. Still believing. Still fighting our way back to life.

EuroLeague basketball is returning to Israel. And on Thursday night, so are we.