The strategy Maccabi Tel Aviv employed last night should have come as a surprise to anyone following coach Zvi Sherf's career, save for the recent Real Madrid game. Since his rivalry with Pini Gershon started in the 1990s, when he was coaching Hapoel Jerusalem and Gershon was at the helm of Maccabi, the two have not only been bitching constantly at each other. They have come to represent two diametrically opposed schools of basketball, on both offense and defense.
Gershon fully embraced the match-up zone during his peak when he brought home two Euroleague Cups. The match-up zone, which mixes up man-to-man with the traditional zone, can be employed in transition from offense, which has confused other teams and has led to numerous turnovers and throwaways.
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In contrast, Sherf was known all these years as the poster child of almost total man-to-man, and drew fire for his fixation and inflexibility. Even when he came to Maccabi for his current stint, Sherf spoke of his disgust for "switching at every pick" - a style that ousted coach Oded Katash espoused and got Maccabi lost.
Sherf's replacement of Katash pumped the players with life, and Maccabi's defense picked up noticeably despite its simplicity. No one changed his man, and the strategy worked until it didn't. Man-to-man let Hapoel Jerusalem take the State Cup, Jason Williams and Bnei Hasharon to put on a three-point show in Yad Eliahu, and Lynn Greer to put on a one-man show in Olympiacos' away victory over Maccabi.
And suddenly it all changed. "Days before the game in Madrid, we started to work on the zone," tells David Bluthenthal. "And I admit it sure was surprising. But, even though we barely practiced it, it caught on pretty quickly because the players are players. They know how to guard both man-to-man and zone. In the end what won the game for us against Real was a sort of match-up zone we used in the third quarter, when we came back from 13 points down. We just didn't let them play their usual offense, and we forced them to take threes, the kind they don't like. So they shot poorly, and we won."
Maccabi officials say the zone was brought in thanks mainly to Guy Goodes, who has leaned on Sherf to bring in new types of defense. "Zvi sometimes takes a while to buy into new things," says an Isareli coach, "but it looks like Guy managed to convince him it's necessary for the team, and Zvi wants first of all what's best for the team."
While most of the team is new, several players - Nikola Vujcic, Derek Sharp, Tal Burstein and Yotam Halperin - played Gershon's match-up zone and know what to do. "I think the match-up zone started even in the game against Holon, a little before Real," Goodes asserts. "It made a big impact for us, and we continued with it against Real, where it also made the difference." He added that the fact the veterans were used to it made it easier for the new players.
Tal Burstein, who was watching practices in street clothes until recently, said, "The truth is it's reminiscent of Pini's Maccabi. I was really glad to see the match-up zone work against Real, it was one of the best games I've seen this year if not in the past few years."
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