David Blatt 370.(Photo by: Asaf Kliger) |
It’s time to find out what Mac TA is made of
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By ALLON SINAI
12/26/2012
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Sinai Says: Despite the many doubters, coach David Blatt believes his team has what it takes to advance from the Euroleague Top 16.
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After almost three months and a full two dozen games over all competitions,
there still remain more questions than answers regarding this season’s Maccabi
Tel Aviv.
On the face of it, Maccabi once again has a team capable of
challenging for a place in the Euroleague Final Four.
Besides winning 13
of 14 games in local competitions as expected, the yellow- and-blue also
advanced to the Euroleague Top 16 from first place in regular season Group B
with an 8-2 record.
Even if it has displayed the occasional erratic game,
how possibly could there be any doubts regarding a team which has gone 21-3 in
all competitions since the start of the season? But it is not just cynical
journalists who are questioning Maccabi’s chances of success by its standards
this season.
Part-owner David Federman is also one of the
skeptics.
“I’m not sure we are good enough to progress past the Top 16,”
Federman said at the halftime break of Maccabi’s win over Ironi Ashkelon in the
last 16 of the State Cup last Sunday.
“The team needs time to gel. We saw
Maccabi in the regular season and I think we have the potential to be a good
team. But we need a lot of patience and the fans, and perhaps also the
ownership, don’t have that much patience.”
Blatt reacted vehemently when
he was told of Federman’s assessment.
“Everyone can keep talking and we
will continue to win and finish in first place,” he said. “It is true that we
are not the strongest team in Europe, but we come to play every day. I don’t
know what people want from us. I really enjoy working with my guys every day and
people can continue to disregard us and that might help us down the
road.”
So who to believe? After all, it seems like Federman and Blatt
haven’t been watching the same team this season.
But the true difference
between the two is probably more philosophical than
practical.
Pessimistic Federman is aware of Maccabi’s record and the fact
that it led the Euroleague in index rating during the regular season, but he
also takes into account that the team did so in the weakest of the four groups
and was far from impressive in many of its wins.
Optimistic Blatt, on the
other hand, remembers that he once more had to build a team almost from scratch,
with only five players returning from last season, doing so with what is a
mediocre budget by current Euroleague standards.
Blatt is right to say
that it is unrealistic to demand any more from his team, but Federman recognizes
that expectations at Maccabi usually have very little to do with
reality.
The fact Maccabi rarely faced a toplevel opponent in the first
three months of the campaign means that the side’s true potential has yet to be
revealed.
While on paper it seems almost inevitable that Tel Aviv’s
roster will crumble against the likes of Barcelona, European champion Olympiacos
and BV Khimki Moscow in Group F of the Top 16, Blatt has accustomed fans to
expect his teams to play far better than the sum of their parts.
There
was a hope among Maccabi supporters that the squad would be significantly
strengthened ahead of the Top 16, but few believe that the lone addition of
young Croatian center Darko Planinic in place of Giorgi Shermadini will be of
any importance in the short run.
Even the likes of Caja Laboral Vitoria,
Montepaschi Siena and Fenerbahce Ulker look to have superior rosters to Maccabi,
leaving Besiktas JK as the only one of the eight teams in Group F which is
content with simply reaching the Top 16.
Blatt is confident his side will
finish in the top four and reach the quarterfinal playoffs for the third
straight year under his guidance.
Federman and the critics have done him
a favor by lowering the expectations, but Blatt knows that ultimately it is he
who shoulders the responsibility for any failure.
Either way, starting
from Thursday’s Top 16 opener at Siena we will discover if it was Blatt or
Federman who got it right.
The truth likely lies somewhere in the
middle.
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