Itongadol.- A season as underdogs has forged a basketball team with unparalleled determination and toughness, but will that be enough in the Euroleague finals?
After Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv rallied late in the game to defeat the heavily-favored CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague\’s Final Four, it is set to face Real Madrid in the finals on Sunday night.
The team has every reason to celebrate before it enters its biggest test yet. Even coach David Blatt admitted after the game on Friday that Maccabi has overshot every possible expectation this season. When asked if the sky is the limit, Blatt said that in this storm of a season, Macabbi long ago touched the sky and reached the moon.
To say that Maccabi was an underdog going into Friday\’s game is an understatement. Don\’t just look at CSKA\’s advantage in funding, height, depth and talent – the figures from the game speak for themselves. Maccabi was outrebounded 43-30; it reached the foul line only 6 times, scoring only half of those; its field goal percentage inside the arch was 45%, compared to CSKA\’s 56%; it got very little production out of two of its most promising players (Schortsanitis had 4 points in 14 minutes and Ingles had 2 in 15).
If Blatt would have seen these figures before the game, he would have thrown in the towel. According to the known rules of basketball, these are the stats of a loser. But as we have learned from its previous stunning appearance in Milan, which propelled the team into the Final Four, Maccabi operates under different laws.