Even without the team's biggest star of the regular season, Maccabi is ahead in its playoff series with Panathinaikos.
Without Baldwin, Maccabi relied on Blatt and Cleveland
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Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv moving within a single victory of its first Final Four in a decade has been getting to that position without its top-rated player.
Wade Baldwin, a strong All-EuroLeague First Team candidate, led Maccabi in scoring and PIR during the regular season and was second on the team in assists and steals. He had 26 points and 5 assists in the team's Play-In Showdown blowout win over Baskonia. And in the series opener against Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens, an 87-91 road win for Maccabi, he matched the team's best PIR with 18.
Baldwin did not finish Game 1, however, due to a calf injury he suffered with 8 minutes left and his team down by a bucket on the scoreboard. He has not been on court since then, although Maccabi is hoping he'll be healthy for Game 4 on Thursday.
The backcourt mainstay for Maccabi has been his fellow starter, Lorenzo Brown, who is leading the team's playoff effort with 16.7 points, 5.7 assists and a PIR of 17.7 while logging almost 32 minutes per game
In Baldwin's absence, though, Maccabi has found solutions in a duo of guards who bring different strengths to the task of matching up with the talented and versatile Panathinaikos backcourt.
Antonius Cleveland is the designated defender in Baldwin's absence, helping to make life difficult for Panathinaikos scorers Kendrick Nunn and Kostas Sloukas while also attacking the rim. He's averaging almost 7 minutes more in the playoffs, with 2.1 extra points and 1.0 more rebounds per game than he had in the regular season.
Tamir Blatt, even if his shooting and scoring has fallen off relative to the regular season, is putting up 5.3 assists as compared to 4.7 until now. His 6 assists in Game 3 helped Maccabi reach a total of 23, which is the club record in a playoff game.
Although Maccabi struggled in Game 2 as Panathinaikos won at home 95-79 behind a career-high 29 points from Sloukas, Game 3 was a different story. It marked just the second time in his 45 playoff games to date that Sloukas played more than 10 minutes and was held scoreless. After his team trailed by as many as 18 points in the second half, Nunn led a late charge for Panathinaikos and finished with 25 points, but Maccabi held onto win 85-83.
Both Cleveland and Blatt were in and out throughout the fourth quarter as Maccabi head coach Oded Kattash looked for solutions. His decision to keep Blatt on court for the game's last 3 minutes when defense was called for drew a question at the post-game press conference that Kattash answered eloquently.
"First of all, we needed Tamir (on the court) as another ball handler and somebody who can make decisions," Kattash said. "And I am a coach who believes in his players. I don't judge them based on one game or whether the shots go in or out. I trust Tamir. As a team, we trust Tamir. It doesn't interest me so much of his shots go in or not. Tamir was brilliant for us today. He was unfazed by their aggressiveness and was key in starting our offense. A lot of our points in transition came through his hands. And the effort that our [point] guards, Tamir and Lorenzo, are making is immense, as is the aggressiveness that they are feeling from the PAO guards."
Indeed, through three playoff games, Maccabi's average of just 8.0 turnovers is not only the best of any team in the playoffs. It is 3.0 fewer than Panathinaikos is committing and 4.3 fewer than Maccabi's average during the season.
In a series that is being decided by the smallest details, the turnover difference in Maccabi's favor as well as it's 76.9% to 63.6% edge in free throw shooting, to which Blatt and Cleveland have contributed by going a combined 5-for-5 at the foul line, is enough to make the difference – even in the absence of a superstar.