Another EuroLeague night, another emotional rollercoaster in the amusement park that is Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 2025/26 season. It started as an evening that saw the yellow-and-blue dancing on the court in Belgrade, continued with a muddy trench battle that slowly eroded the Maccabi lead and raised the pressure level. As the game headed towards its end, Maccabi showed character with an unexpected hero and pulled away from the Turks, only to lose composure and nearly gift Nando De Colo the comeback of the decade. But in basketball, all’s well that ends well and the ending was perfect: The final 10 seconds saw 6 passes between 5 players who withstood the Turkish pressure literally and figuratively and ended with 2 points that could prove very valuable.

It’s worth going through all the ups and downs packed into those 40 minutes, at the end of which became 11 straight games between Maccabi and Fenerbahçe in which the home team comes away with the W. If the yellow-and-blue fans who somehow made it from Tel Aviv had wanted to pray Mincha before the game, they might have needed Shimon Mizrahi to complete the quorum, so it’s hard to call what happened at Aleksandar Nikolić Hall in Belgrade a “home court.” Still, Maccabi opened the game against the reigning champions and league leaders as if they were pushed forward by divine hands.

Fenerbahçe is not the most talented team in Europe and in my opinion maybe not even a top-five one. The Turks’ secret, as we’ve seen in their games against Israeli teams and in general, is that they know better than anyone how to drag their opponent into their comfort zone: low scoring, low percentages, close margins, a slugfest. Šaras’ team records the fewest assists in the league (16.1), but also allows the same number, the lowest among all 20 teams. Fener is only 15th in points per game, yet leads the EuroLeague thanks to its defense, by far the best in the competition. That defense forces opponents into the lowest shooting percentages in the league, both from two-point range (51%) and three-point range (30.9%) and thanks to being the second-best defensive rebounding team, they were allowing fewer than 80 points per game on average coming into this matchup.

All those numbers are just to say that in the first half, Fener didn’t manage to pull Maccabi down to their level and conceded in one half numbers that could be enough for a full game. First of all, Maccabi attacked inside, targeting the Turks’ automatic switches with the Jimmy Clark–Roman Sorkin combination and didn’t attempt a single three-pointer in the first four minutes. In the second quarter, Tamir Blatt, who’s been in a decision-making frenzy, had a brilliant stretch, squeezing everything possible out of the lemon called Marcio Santos with 5 assists and no turnovers in the half. Maccabi created a constant, reliable threat in the paint, which also generated good looks from outside; even when those didn’t fall, they often ended up back in yellow hands. Maccabi played freely, its style of basketball taking it to a 15-point lead before the ageless Nando De Colo trimmed the damage late in the half.

Remember those numbers from earlier? In just the first half, Fener allowed Maccabi to score 57 points (72% of a full-game average), dish 15 assists (93%), grab 11 offensive rebounds (98%) compared to just 4, and force 10 turnovers (74%). Add 11/11 from the free-throw line, 16 second-chance points and 13 points off turnovers and you get a perfect half by Maccabi against a team whose greatest strength is disrupting the opponent’s game plan.

Fenerbahçe came out as Fenerbahçe in the second half. Šaras pulled out Bitim, who hadn’t seen the floor in the first half and matched all 197 centimeters of him against Blatt. At that point, playmaking shifted to Jimmy Clark, who did everything a ball handler can when Wade Baldwin turns you into a project. In the third quarter, the guys in yellow-and-blue already had 7 turnovers against just 2 assists and the 14-point halftime lead was cut to 6. In the final quarter, Šaras’ squad tightened the screws, the gap shrank and the scent of an inevitable comeback began to fill the air.

But Maccabi seems to be in a different place now. Oshae Brissett is in a different place now, with different hair, too. The forward let his braids loose and delivered excellent closing minutes on both ends: a dunk on offense, a block on Khem Birch (and by the way—what was he doing there instead of Chris Silva?!) and then a 3-pointer at the other end. Those were the moments when the yellow-and-blue rode the wave again, going up by 9 with 47 seconds left. But Fenerbahçe didn’t give up and tested Maccabi’s nerves right to the very end.

Once again, it felt like things might unravel in a sequence of mistakes worthy of three “Zalgiris miracles” but hey, Maccabi is in a different place now. Without a timeout, under heavy pressure, Oded Katash’s lineup moved the ball beautifully through the white jerseys, from one to another, until it reached the hot hands of Brissett, who put the hammer down for the biggest win of Maccabi’s season.

From here, the pressure will only continue to rise, but after passing the ultimate test, they now also have the mental weapon for the final stretch. Add to that the losses of Dubai and Milan and it seems there’s no better way to head into the critical Thursday game against the team from the UAE. The burden of proof hasn’t gone anywhere but win the next game and what looked unrealistic around Hanukkah will seem far more reasonable even before we reach Passover.