Just as Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Oded Katash finished off his post game press conference after a loss to Barcelona, the assembled media were notified to stay in place and not leave as there would be something special to follow.

As one of the Yellow & Blue greats Nikola Vujcic entered the room in stoic fashion and sat down at the dais just after the ownership group had taken their places in the first row, it was clear what the 6”11 former Euroleague star and general manager/sports director’s announcement was going to be; that after roughly a decade in the role he would be taking a break and stepping down from the position.

This should come as no surprise as the Croatian great that won two Euroleague titles with Maccabi Tel Aviv as player and then one more while in the front office has been alone in Israel since the summer after his wife and children either moved back home or to other locations in Europe.

Vujcic, who has been the topic of much discussion throughout the Maccabi-verse, for the good and not so good will go down as one that one one hand made his mark working with management to build roster after roster, year by year but didn’t quite reach the on court success that he himself would have wanted to.

When the announcement was made there were many people who popped the corks of the champaign bottles that had been waiting to open on this day, while others will look back at the 3x Euroleague first team player as a huge loss to the club. That is certainly the way that ownership viewed him, as a true asset that helped keep the ship afloat while managing the day in and day out player budgets to a T.

Vujcic was always patient, respectful and honorable in his role and those traits should be very much be revered. Sure there were times when everyone would have liked to have heard him speak more about the successes and failures that he was part of in his role and there were plenty of both. But ultimately and most importantly, he was loyal to his employers and his relationship with ownership is what matters most, not how he ends up relating to the fans and media.

Fans had tried numerous times to oust Vujcic and pressure him to depart, but each and every time they tried to do just that, he became even more emboldened by his standing within the club and that as clear as day when David Federman spoke about the criticism he faced.

There were plenty of Israel league titles and State Cups that were won on his watch and there were numerous ones that were lost. Vujcic was in charge of putting together the roster of players with the head coach in which there were plenty during his time and there were some hits and plenty of misses along the way.

Perhaps the fans had a very good case that Vujcic’s rate of success was not as they wanted to see it and surely that was a concern to ownership and management, but they were the ones that had the power to make a change and in their eyes he was doing a fair enough job to keep his post. Whether they were right or wrong can be up for debate for years.

Of course, the only way that the Maccabi fan views things are through the pure Yellow & Blue glasses of victories and defeats but for ownership there was a massive layer of other issues that Vujcic dealt with and in their opinion it would seem that he was more than fine doing their biding and keeping to the plan.

Vujcic was able to lure one a solid head coach in Greek Ioannis Sfairopoulos to Tel Aviv and in his first full season with the team could have done dome incredible things but unfortunately the campaign as cut short due to COVID-19. The season between the departure of David Blatt and Sfairopoulos were generally viewed as failures with a revolving door of bench bosses including five in one season. While the end of Sfairopoulos’s tenure was one that didn’t go the way that many would have liked.

Maccabi went 50% in both Israel State Cups and League championships post the 2014 Euroleague championship which in the era of one game knockout and finals fours is not terrible. But the Yellow & Blue are looking to keep that number at 100%.

In the Euroleague, Maccabi did not have much success, reaching the playoffs only in the first season after Blatt, the COVID-19 season which in reality the postseason wasn’t played and last year when the Russian teams were expelled from the competition.

Maccabi clearly could have done better.

But in today’s day and age where there are so many other factors involved, ownership and management felt that Vujcic was doing the job and doing it well enough to keep him in the position.

Ultimately the buck stops with them.

Vujcic will be around for the duration of the season and the club will most probably look internally as to who will take the baton from him in this area. This will most probably be a combination of David Blatt who is already in an advisory role and the head of scouting Avi Even who ended last season on the bench in place of Sfairopoulos.

Could Guy Pnini be groomed to take over such a role over time? That is definitely a possibility but most probably he will be behind the bench as part of the coaching staff first.

What will be Vujcic lasting legacy with the Yellow & Blue? That is still to be determined because there is still a long season ahead of Maccabi and at 4-3 with two Euroleague losses in a row, the pressure has begun to mount on Oded Katash. A game against his former coach, the legendary Zeljko Obradovic and Partizan Belgrade is on tap for Friday night which will be followed by a home Derby versus Hapoel Tel Aviv, a Euroleague contest against powerhouse Olympiacos, then another trip to Serbia to play Red Star and an Israeli Classico with Hapoel Jerusalem to polish off the month.

That is not an easy road over the next few weeks and maybe, just maybe, Vujcic will have one more move to make before heads off into the Yellow & Blue sunset.