Victory against all odds for modern-day Maccabi

Tyrese Rice and David Blatt’s moment of glory transcends sports.

By ALLON SINAI
Teamplayers lift coach David Blatt (photo credit: REUTERS)
Teamplayers lift coach David Blatt
(photo credit: REUTERS)
There are countless images from Maccabi Tel Aviv’s sixth European championship triumph that will forever live in the minds of the club’s many fans.
However, there were two moments that perhaps best epitomized Maccabi’s remarkable run to the title against all odds in Milan two weeks ago.
It wasn’t a particular basket or some extravagant play. In fact, both arrived after the final buzzer had sounded at the Mediolanum Forum. It was no coincidence that they came courtesy of coach David Blatt and star guard Tyrese Rice, the team’s two biggest heroes of the night and the season.
Maccabi had just secured an unforgettable 98-86 overtime victory over Real Madrid in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague final, upsetting what was widely regarded as the best team in Europe for its first continental title since 2005.
After scoring 14 of his game-high 26 points in overtime, Maccabi’s American guard Rice was called to the center of the arena to receive the Final Four MVP trophy he deservedly earned.
Seconds after he hoisted it aloft, his son, Ashawn, ran onto the arena floor from the stands and lovingly embraced his father.
There is a long story behind that emotional scene.
Rice is a single father.
He has raised his son with the help of his family for the past eight years.
Since 2009, he has done so in Greece, Germany and Lithuania, before moving to Israel last year.
Rice grew up with his mother in Chesterfield, Virginia, in an impoverished neighborhood.
His mother and basketball kept him off the streets and he was a star at Lloyd C. Bird High School, with coach Randy Cave becoming a father figure to him.
Cave helped him earn a basketball scholarship with Boston College, but another blow was awaiting Rice just around the corner.
At the start of Rice’s freshman season at Boston College, Cave was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a fast-spreading cancer. Rice learned about Cave dying on December 6, 2005, just a few hours before Boston College was to play against Michigan State at Madison Square Garden on national television.
He decided to play, eventually logging 26 minutes in the game and scoring 5 points.
Rice seriously considered retiring following Cave’s death before his mother and grandmother ultimately convinced him to continue to play.
Ashawn’s birth a month later in January 2006 changed Tyrese’s priorities, with Rice having no intention of shirking his responsibility to support his son. Rice is still in touch with Ashawn’s mother, but he took it upon himself to raise him.
Rice took Ashawn with him wherever he played. However, for the first time since his birth, Rice was away from his son for much of the past season, with Ashawn remaining with his grandmother in Virginia.
It was no coincidence that Rice struggled in his first few months as a Maccabi player, with the separation from his son making the always complicated acclimatization process so much more difficult.
Rice averaged just 6.7 points per game in the team’s 10 Euroleague regular season contests, scoring in double figures only once.
In November of last year, Rice refused to join a team timeout d u r i n g a BSL game against Hapoel Eilat after being frustrated with his benching by coach Blatt. Rice’s subversive act was a glaring illustration of his initial difficulties with the club and rumors quickly spread that he was on his way out of Maccabi.
Blatt settled the storm by talking to Rice time and again, assuring him that his chance would arrive as long as he continued to work hard.
Rice did just that and slowly but surely earned the coach’s trust before becoming one of the stars of the team. He played a crucial role in Maccabi’s extraordinary victory over Olimpia Milano in Game 1 of the quarterfinal playoffs that set the foundation for the 3-1 series win and the yellow-and-blue’s progress to the Final Four.
Rice scored Tel Aviv’s winning basket with 5.5 seconds to play in the Final Four semifinal against CSKA Moscow before his overtime heroics in the final against Madrid.
“It is no secret that I struggled in the beginning of the season,” Rice said after Maccabi’s triumph. “But sometimes you have to earn things the hard way. I was mainly disappointed with myself at the time. People thought I had a problem with coach Blatt, but that is not true. I was frustrated with myself because I knew I can play better.”
Rice will be back at Maccabi for the second year of his contract next season and this time he will have Ashawn by his side after enrolling his son in the Walworth Barbour American International School in Israel, located in Even Yehuda.
It remains to be seen if Blatt will return for a fifth consecutive season at the club, with the coach negotiating a contract extension with Maccabi’s ownership.
However, even if Blatt should leave, he will be doing so on an ultimate high. He claimed his first Euroleague title as a head coach in Milan and has achieved all that there is to achieve at the club.
Blatt remained characteristically cool throughout the game, but he finally loosened up after the final buzzer and gave a press conference for the ages.
“One of the greatest quotes I ever read in my life was said by Steve Jobs in the last moments of his life,” Blatt began. “The last word he said was ‘wow.’ Think about how wonderful that is, how positive that is, how optimistic that is. A man with his dying breath says ‘wow.’ That means he saw something going forward that gave us all some hope.
“I’ve been thinking about that for a long, long time because in basketball and in sports, every day isn’t a great day,” Blatt added. “You have tough days, you have disappointments, obstacles, problems.
And the way that you deal with those things and the attitude you take determines whether or not you’re going to be able to go forward and if you’re going to be able to be successful. But most importantly, as a coach if you’re going to be able to lead your men to bigger and better things or lead them out of the dark when they don’t see.”
There are many lessons that can be learned from Maccabi’s unexpected success in the Final Four, even for those who have little interest in basketball. Rice and Blatt both led by example and in their moment of glory they transcended sports.
They inspired thousands, maybe millions, in Milan and that is so much more important than any trophy.