I feel a certain mission to write about the incredible drama that unfolded on Thursday night at Yad Eliyahu (If you didn’t see it, well, that’s a real shame). Because a game like this deserves many, many words. It gave us so much. It was extraordinary in so many parameters. A game that produced wild statistical numbers and the one named after a pedal we used in cars to shift gears.

We had a lot of clutch last night. A lot of heroes and villains hitting vicious 3-pointers from unreasonable distances. A lot of runs, a lot of fouls, a lot of gray hairs, a lot of balls bouncing on the rims of the arena and stubbornly refusing to fall, preserving by the grace of their ring-shaped nature (yes) , the yellow team’s play-in dream. 111–106, Maccabi Tel Aviv BC over FC Bayern Munich Basketball. Where on earth do you even begin?

Maybe at the beginning. Bayern, coached by Svetislav Pesic, came into this game with a clear philosophy that had won them their last four games in the best league in Europe: they would tempt their opponent to shoot as much as they liked from beyond the arc and suffocate the paint with multiple layers of help defense. It’s a gamble and recently, it’s worked beautifully. When Pesic’s players managed to hold opponents to low 3-point percentages, as happened in the last three games against AS Monaco Basket, Paris Basketball (33% each) and especially Hapoel Tel Aviv BC (16.7%), those opponents averaged just 73 points per game and the Bavarians won every time.

That gamble failed last against Maccabi, who hovered around 60% from beyond the arc all evening and finished four quarters with 20 made triples (60%). An extraordinary stat, of course and not enough on its own to secure the win, but I’d argue it wasn’t random. The core principle of coach Oded Katash is first and foremost the belief he instills in his players, even if they’re not Europe’s elite headliners.

Just like Pesic, Katash gives his guys in yellow-and-blue a green light to shoot with no discrimination of religion, race, gender, socioeconomic background, rotation status, or position. From Jimmy Clark to Marcio Santos and Oshae Brissett to Gur Lavy, everyone has the confidence to fire away and don’t be surprised when they knock them down. This time it was the Tamir Blatt and Will Rayman show who combined for 36 points, 26.5 more (a 278% increase) than their season average of 9.5. They got their shots, took them without hesitation and when their feet were behind the arc, they simply did not miss (11-for-11).

This incredible shooting display didn’t skip the best shooter on the eastern side of the Atlantic either. Personally, I’d bench Brandon Ingram in the All-Star Game and replace the injured Steph Curry with Andreas (Andy) Obst, who dropped 33 points with eight 3-pointers. There were moments in the third quarter (4-for-4 from deep) when I couldn’t understand what this phenomenon was doing on the court in Tel Aviv and not in Los Angeles, a question that answered itself in the fourth, with two rare missed free throws in crunch time.

All of this built toward a 90–90 tie with 4:42 left in the fourth quarter. That’s when the drama intensified. It became a trench war of scratches and grit, with Roman Sorkin leaving everything on the floor to keep the yellows level at 95 two minutes later. At that moment, Tamir Blatt gave Maccabi the lead with a hustle play, diving for an offensive rebound to set a season high in boards (6), drawing a foul, and setting a new season high in points (20) from the free-throw line. Add 6-for-6 from three, nine assists, and the team’s highest plus-minus (+11) and you could say this was the best European night of David’s son’s career. He was unstoppable.

At that stage, Maccabi led by two but were missing their ultimate closer, Iffe Lundberg, who exited with a suspected ankle injury. In his absence, the ball found Will Rayman, who left a point at the free-throw line and set up what was (supposedly) Bayern’s final possession. It ended with a crazy three by Neno Dimitrijevic in Rayman’s face, plus the foul sending him to the line to put his team ahead with nine seconds left. Clark received the decisive ball and found Brissett inside. He couldn’t finish but drew the foul. The much-maligned forward added another monkey onto his back by missing the crucial free throw, sending us to overtime where redemption awaited him.

Like the closing minutes, overtime was chaotic, full of monitor reviews, fouls, mistakes, and turnovers. In the end, beyond whatever spirits hover around the rims near Shimon Mizrahi’s seat, what won the game for Maccabi Tel Aviv was the belief Katash gives his players, without discrimination of any kind. The same faith that lets them launch freely in the second quarter gives them the courage to make bold decisions as the clock winds down.

What stood out to me most was that the players who won the game in overtime were precisely those who had played the worst during the first 40 minutes—yet Katash never stopped believing in them. Jimmy Clark had six points on 20% shooting but hit two huge baskets, the last a beautiful euro-step that gave Maccabi breathing room. Jaylen Hoard had been passive on both ends all game, yet stayed on the floor in overtime and added six points, including an alley-oop from Blatt that ignited the arena.

The final two points in those five minutes belonged to Oshae Brissett, who had missed a critical free throw at the end of regulation, but then put his body on Dimitrijevic, grabbed the ball, and took it all the way for a dunk that sealed the story.

And when the buzzer sounded, Maccabi Tel Aviv found themselves just two wins away from tenth place, the final spot leading to the play-in. Who would have believed it?