The Israeli champs snapped a pair of losing streaks by blasting ALBA by 35 in Berlin.
Maccabi gets back on track with record win
Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv came into Round 27 having lost three games in a row and six straight on the road. It ended those streaks with an emphatic 71-106 triumph over ALBA Berlin at Mercedes-Benz Arena in the German capital on Thursday, setting a club record for the largest margin of victory ever on the road.
The 25-point victory, which took Maccabi’s record to 14-13, improved on the 83–113 win over Baskoia Vitoria-Gasteiz in November 2019. Two Maccabi players from that game, Jake Cohen and team captain John DiBartolomeo, also played for Maccabi this time.
While the record margin is nice, it was not at all what Maccabi was focused on. The key for the Israeli champs was getting back on track.
“We know what’s in front of us. We have a very tough March. We were sitting in 10th place after the break, so it was important to string along a good month of March to get ourselves in good playoff position,” Wade Baldwin said after the game.
Baldwin needed just 22 minutes to produce 16 points and 5 assists for a team-high PIR of 28, but he was more eager to talk about how Maccabi played defense on this night.
“We are one of the better teams offensively in the league. Our issue has been how we defend the ball,” he said. “We did a very good job holding a team that has very high possession, plays a fastbreak game, and we held them to 71 points on their home court. If we continue to do that in the remaining seven games, we’ll be in a good position.”
All the coaches in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague surely had some concerns about how their teams would look after a two-week hiatus, which saw many players travel to compete for their national teams last week. Coach Oded Kattash commented that he had only 48 hours with his full squad before this game.
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“As a staff, we didn’t know what to expect from the team after the break, but I liked the way we played, I like the way we competed,” he said at the press conference. “We were ready. As we said before the game, every game until the end of the season in the EuroLeague, if we want to make the playoffs, we have to play that way, especially defensively. Most of the game we did a great job defensively.”
Maccabi outrebounded ALBA 29-37 and forced 15 turnovers. The Israeli champs were more aggressive on both ends, attacking the basket and getting to the foul line 21 times, which was three times as many as ALBA. The hosts avoided attacking the paint and settled for threes, tying a club record with 37 attempts, but only making 10 of them.
The end result is that Maccabi got the monkey off its back as it enters the critical stretch that Baldwin spoke about. It already moved up one spot in the standings on Thursday and will try to give trending up when it takes on Zalgiris Kaunas next week in Belgrade, Serbia.