BROOKLYN– Maccabi Electra, based in Tel Aviv, has historically been one of the best known professional basketball clubs in the world, drawing strong support from Jewish communitites throughout Europe and the United States.
The club, which started in the mid-1930s, has been the most successful basketball team in Israel, winning six European championships, one Adriatic Championship, 51 Isreali Championships and 41 Israeli Cups. Maccabi, the reigning 2014 Euroleague champions, was chosen to represent the league on a two game North American tour.
But the Maccabi Electra team that showed up to play the Cleveland Cavaliers Sunday and the Brooklyn Nets two nights later has undergone a major overhaul from the group that rallied from 15 point down to stun powerful CSKA Moscow, 68-67, in the semis when guard Tyrese Rice scored a game winner with 5.5 seconds left on the clock and then scored 26 points as his team upset Real Madrid, 96-88, in overtime to win the 2014 Euroleague Final Four in Madrid.
The championship received world-wide media attention after, in response to Real Madrid’s loss to Maccabi, over 18,000 anti-Semitic messages were posted on Twitter in an outpouring of hatred against Jews. Several Jewish and anti-racism organizations in Spain filed a criminal complaint against five identified Twitter users for incitement to hatred, defamation and glorification of terrorism.
Rice, the former Boston College star, is gone, signing a three year deal with the Russian club Khimki. So is celebrated coach David Blatt, Euroleague BAsketball Alexander Gomelsky Coach of the Year, who had left to coach the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers, along with all Euroleague point guard Ricky Hickman, who left to sign with Fenerbahçe Ülker of the Turkish League and 6-7 forward David Blu, a an iconic long range shooter built his reputation in Israel and made five critical threes against CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague semis, has retired.
Maccabi has elevated assistant Guy Goodes, a former Israeli Super League guard from Haifa who was Blatt’s assistant for four years, to head coach and rebuild its 12 man roster around nine American players, including guard Jeremy Pargo from Gonzaga, who spent bits and pieces of the 2011 through 2013 seasons in the NBA before playing a year with CSKA Moscow, then signing with Maccabi last summer and center Alex Tyus.
But this is a art in progress.
Maccabi lost Flemingo of Brazil, the champions of the League of Americas, in a three game Intercontinental Cup competition in Rio before traveling to the States.
In what was a rare chance for Maccabi’s fans in the Midwest to watch their team play, a sellout crowd of 20,562 showed up at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland to watch the Cavs, who were celebrating LeBron James’ homecoming, cruise to a 107-80 victory over Blatt’s former team. Guard Sylven Landesberg, who was born in Brooklyn, starred at Virginia and has been with Maccabi since 2012, paced Maccabi with 23 points. Pargo added 18.
Several dozen anti-Israel protesters, many of them waving Palestine flags, gathered outside the arena before the game. Holding signs that read: “Hold Israel Accountable” and “Boycott Israel,” the protesters peacefully chanted behind barricades set up across the street from the downtown.
Pargo scored 27 points against the Nets as Maccabi finished up a 17 day, three continent exhibition tour with a 111-94 exhibition loss before a crowd of 15,915 at the Barclays Center. Forward Brian Randle from Illinois who led Gilboa Galil Elyon of Isreal to the 2008-09 Isreali championship, beating Maccabi Tel Aviv in the finals of the Israeli Final Four and signed with Maccabi this summer, had 16 points and Landesburg 14 and 8 rebounds in an expanded role.
Maccabi played the Nets without Tyus, who sat out with an injured ankle, but Maccabi, to its credit, was competitive for the first 28 minutes, cutting the lead to one point several times in the second quarter. But, without Tyus, they had little answers from 7-0 Brooklyn center Brook Lopez, who finished with 20 points and 2012 Olympic guard Deron Williams, who added 17.
