I'm not sure what Maccabi Tel Aviv's game plan looked like on coach Zvika Sherf's whiteboard, but on the parquet it looked as if his thoughts ran something like this:
"Although all year our most effective strategy was the pick-and-roll, let's completely neglect it and try to get the ball in the paint whenever we're on offense. Though we played our best games when we hustled, let's play slowly. Let's squeeze the game until the juice flows - not from our opponents, but from ourselves.
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"We'll suppress star point man Will Bynum. Alex Garcia, the cornerstone of our defense, won't even play in the first half, but in the second he won't get a minute's rest. Jason Williams is taking advantage of our disorganized zone defense by nailing three-pointers? No problem, we'll let him sink some more.
"And when the clock hits the final minutes, we'll bench captain Derrick Sharp, lest his winning mentality rub off on the other players. If we win, we'll raise our arms toward the rafters and ask God how we did it. Maybe he'll have some idea."
No, don't slow it down!
It was not Maccabi that defeated Bnei Hasharon coach Effi Birnbaum. What truly defeated the team was the cliche that when playing at Maccabi's Nokia Arena, a visiting team must slow down its tempo, even when it has achieved a comfortable lead and the host has its back against the wall. Instead of speeding up the tempo, instead of hustling, the order was apparently to continue crawling. Thus, with Birnbaum's help, Maccabi crawled into the final.
Another loser of this Final Four was Bnei Hasharon guard Meir Tapiro. Winners lead their teams to titles. The only season Tapiro fit that description was last year, when he took his then-Hapoel Jerusalem to the State Cup, and in that campaign he was not in top form anyway. Yesterday Bnei Hasharon needed merely an adequate game from him, no more. In what could have been one of the defining moments of his career, Tapiro finished the game 1 for 12 from the field.
"How can you do this to me? I've waited for this my whole career!" he screamed at the referee after his fifth foul in last year's Final Four. This year he was presented with one more chance, but he again failed to deliver. A born winner indeed.
Looking at the Men in Yellow during the last minute of the game, you'd think Maccabi's players had reconciled themselves to the idea of losing the title. There was Lior Eliyahu staring into space. Tal Burstein was laughing. Terrence Morris was sitting on the bench apathetically with a towel on his head until he was rudely awakened by Sherf's yelling at him to take his place on the floor.
Hapoel coach Miki Dorsman should replay these images before his players again and again today, and insist that they win tonight. There is no reason to expect anything less from the best club in Israel - Hapoel Holon.
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