The dream is over

As John Lennon once sang, "The dream is over". The dream to which I am referring is that of Maccabi Tel Aviv (the basketball club), who dreamt that they would become Euroleague champions three seasons in a row, a feat which hasn't been achieved in nearly 20 years. My, they were close....

Were Maccabi right to have this dream? Yes. Did they deserve to win the championship? No. In my opinion, it was only a fair amount of luck which managed to get them into the final at all. True, the semi-final game against Tau Vittoria showed the players in excellent form, but that game had them playing maybe twice as well as they had played all season, and unfortunately gave false hope regarding their ability in the final.

I consider myself to be far from qualified to give a learned opinion on the subject, but like every other Israeli, I too have an opinion about Maccabi. They should never have signed Will Solomon as point guard, and if having done so, they should have signed a backup point guard (Derrick Sharp is not really a pg). Last night's game showed every thing which was right and wrong about Solomon: yes, he can score three point baskets. Yes, he can penetrate. And yes, he holds the ball for too long, wasting time and often getting into trouble. When he does eventually pass the ball, whoever receives it doesn't have very much time on the clock to do anything valuable with the ball.

Maccabi's best moments last night came when they scored within eight or ten seconds of the possession. Any longer, and the defence would be too strong for them.

Even though last night's game was tough, gritty and not enjoyable as a basketball game, I have to say good words for CSKA, the new Euroleague champions. Whilst they did not play attractive basketball, they had an iron strong defence and simply did not let the magicians of Maccabi do anything with the ball. Baston was almost completely neutralised on the offense because Vujcik couldn't get the ball to him. European season MVP Anthony Parker was merely a shadow of himself, presumably because whoever was guarding him did it so well that AP never got the chance to show his abilities.

But we're talking dreams here. Even at the opening stages of the season, Maccabi had good games and had bad games, an unevenness which didn't speak well for the rest of the season. There was even talk after the first few games of replacing Solomon; in retrospect, maybe Maccabi should have swallowed their pride and replace him. By a momentous amount of luck, Maccabi finished first in the initial group, thus avoiding CSKA, Tau and Panathanaikos in the next round. They could easily have finished third, and then this season would have been a different story.

This luck gave lie to the false hope that Maccabi could do the threpeat. In the second round, they initially lost to Real Madrid (I wrote about this here) and nearly lost to Ulker. But the Maccabi magic - or luck - held true, and again Maccabi was lucky to finish first in the group, thus achieving home court advantage for the quarterfinals. The hope meter was steadily rising even though Maccabi hadn't really played well enough to justify that hope.

The three game quarterfinal against Olimpiakos showed a Maccabi which was no longer head and shoulders in front of all the other teams; rather, it was maybe even a shoulder behind. But somehow Maccabi managed to win (the home advantage played its part) and managed to get to the Final Four.

On the strength of their past few games (and also the fact that they had lost a few Israeli league games, something which happens only rarely), I really didn't expect them to beat Tau. But then Parker and Baston played their game of the season and truly trounced Tau. All they needed to do was maintain that same level and the threpeat would be theirs.

But no. I have been wondering for some time what the next season will hold. I mean, had Maccabi won the championship again this year, would they go all out to win it for a fourth time?? How many of the players would have the same fire to win next year? Haven't other coaches learnt how to beat Maccabi yet? I don't know what the contract status is, but I imagine that several of the senior figures will leave Maccabi and next year will be a transitional one.

Read all the gory details about the game at the Euroleague site.