A battle between two thoroughly enjoyable teams to watch is soon set to take place in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs, as AS Monaco and Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv come up against one another in the 4-5 matchup. The fourth-seed Monaco ended the regular season with a 21-13 record, just one win more than the fifth-seed Maccabi, which ended the campaign with a 20-14 mark. There's not much to separate the two sides, who both come into this series feeling confident about their chances of making it to the Final Four, which adds even more intrigue to a fascinating series.
Home team tends to succeed in this matchup
Since Monaco's rise to the EuroLeague ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, the French club and Maccabi have faced off four times. In those games, each team has two victories apiece – and they have all been triumphs for the home side. This season, Maccabi downed Monaco 78-70 in Tel Aviv back in Round 3, before Monaco exacted revenge, 86-67, in the principality in Round 26. As tends to be the case when playing at home – and even more so in a playoff series – there tends to be more scoring contributions from a wider range of players. For example, Maccabi had five players score 8 or more points in its win over Monaco in Israel, whereas in its road defeat just three players reached that mark. Conversely, for Monaco, four players scored 8 or more points in its defeat at Maccabi, but then seven players did so when it won in Round 26.
Add to that the fact that these two had the best home records this season and the case becomes even stronger. Monaco went 13-4 at Salle Gaston Medecin, good enough for the joint second-best mark in the EuroLeague, but Maccabi led the way this year with a 15-2 record at Menora Mivtachim Arena. The good news for Monaco and its head coach, Sasa Obradovic, is that it can lean on home-court advantage in this series, meaning that – should the history of Monaco vs. Maccabi repeat itself in the playoffs – it has the chance to go up 2-0 before travelling to Tel Aviv. If, as has happened in the past, Maccabi is able to protect its home court, then a decisive do-or-die Game 5 would take place in Monaco. Perhaps one of the main keys to the series will be which team can steal a game on the road.