Maccabi Tel Aviv in basketball: The day after the loss to...

The losing game yesterday (Wednesday) against Bayern Munich made it clear that at this stage, Maccabi Tel Aviv model 2020/21 has a number of problems. If last week the Yellows gave a fight to CSKA, which appeared with a shorter staff than usual and far from its peak capacity, last night a trained, balanced and aggressive team that was superior for most of the game and won “only” 82:85 because of a series of mistakes in the last minutes gave the Israeli champion a chance “Steal a victory,” as Yannis Sapropoulos put it at the end.

The first half, which included 14 losses, only one three-pointer and a poor output of 25 points, put Maccabi in a continuous pursuit of Andrea Trinkieri’s team, and Scotty Wilbkin’s great rise in the last two quarters, in which the guard scored 25 of his 27 points in the game, was not enough. A great shot by Vladimir Lucic and Paul Zippers that revealed the weakness of the current Maccabi in the power forward position, at least defensively.

The Yellows did not record a loss of the ball in the last quarter, but the 18 that came before that made it difficult for them to produce offensive flow and it seems that at the moment, there is no player in the guard position who will share with Wilbkin the burden of leading the ball and managing the attacks. The star managed not bad at all and to his 27 points added seven assists, but is also responsible for five of his team’s losses. Tyler Dorsey, who spent 26 minutes on the floor, looked unfocused and finished with four turnovers, while Chris Jones barely partnered for 10 minutes and was unmarked.

After the game, Sapropolus Explained the difficulty of releasing Wilbkin to position No. 2 on the existing roster: “When we only have Chris Jones as a bench off the bench and without John Dibertolomao, I do not have too many solutions to release him from running the game or share it with Chris. We believe that when John returns, we will have more options to play with two guards. ”

Alongside the playmaker problem, as mentioned, there is the problem in position number 4. Dragan Bender who stands under a magnifying glass regularly, looks in the previous game as someone who is starting to adapt, against Bayern Munich again seems unfocused and soft on the defensive side. The Croatians had five losses in less than 12 minutes on the pitch, compared to three points and three rebounds. On the other hand, the forwards of the German team set the tone: Lucic bombed a career-high in points and index, with 26 and 29 respectively, including 4/5 off the arc and reached the penalty line nine times. Zipperer added 16 points of his own, half of which came from the last pass in the third quarter.

Maccabi currently lacks the defensive answer that Quincy Acey gave her in the forward positions last season and hopes that the return of Omri Caspi can provide her with a solution in this regard. Two days ago Caspi announced on his Instagram account that next week he will try to return to training with the team gradually, so as not to impair the recovery process from the surgery he underwent on his knee in January. The team estimates that during the month of November he may make his debut this season.

Another aspect where the Yellows do not mention the team we saw last season is the aggressiveness. If in the 2019/20 season we got used to seeing a team beating its rivals first in the war, yesterday it was the Germans who showed superiority in this parameter, as he admitted Wilbkin At the press conference: “They played harder than us, were first to every ball. We had too many uncommitted losses and shot ourselves in the legs, ”the guard said.

Elijah Bryant He also addressed the same issue: “Bayern gave us a punch in the face for the start and then we backed off, but we should be the ones to give the first punch in the face of the opponent. No excuses, we did not come ready to play and that is our job. You could say it was because of the short preparation or the plague, but we just didn’t do our job. ”

On the plus side, it is worth noting the good performance of Ante Žižić, who is getting better from game to game and in the first three quarters was the most prominent player in Maccabi Tel Aviv. The chin finished with 19 points and just one miss out of nine shots from the field, in addition to six rebounds. At the same time, he is also a kind of defensive weak point and for this reason Sapropoulos chose to give up his share in the last quarter: “We switched to exchange defense and thought Hunter would be more suitable in keeping Baldwin,” the Greek explained.

There is no doubt that in the Corona era the Euroleague is a different league. Zero Anadolu and Real Madrid started the season with two losses and Maccabi Tel Aviv, which last season lost at home only in its 11th game in Yad Eliyahu, was defeated this season on its own field in the second game. The Yellows do not have much time to draw conclusions from the loss because they already have an away game against Olympiacos waiting for them tomorrow, which defeated the strong Milan yesterday and only a loss by a point against Zalgiris Kaunas prevented them from a perfect balance at the end of three rounds.