Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv held the first practice of the new season Sunday at Hadar Yosef. Blatt: “We’re ready for a good and exciting season.”
By Amy Samin
The first official practice of the 2013-14 season was held Sunday at the Hadar Yosef gym. The practice was run by Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv’s head coach David Blatt, with Shawn James, Devin Smith, Sofo Schortsanitis, Joe Ingles, Jake Cohen, Ben Altit and Arad Harari taking part. Also in attendance was the injured Yuval Naimy, who did not participate in the drills.
Maccabi also invited two of the most talented 16 year old players in Croatia, Dragan Bandar (6’9”) and Ante Zizich (6’8”) to attend practices with the team for a week. The pair attend Nikola Vujčić’s basketball academy and have been watched closely by the scouting department for the last year. Rounding out the practice team are Marcus Relphorde, Alon Levine from Maccabi’s youth department, and Or Edah.
Absent from the practice were assistant coach Guy Goodes and players Yogev Ohayon, Guy Pnini, Alex Tyus, Ricky Hickman and Tyrese Rice, all of whom are taking part (with various national teams) in the FIBA 2013 EuroBasket Championships, as well as Sylven Landesberg, who is in basic training with the IDF.
At the start of the practice, David Blatt said, “I’m very excited about the start of this season. This summer we worked in a very quiet, practical and cooperative manner. We’ve succeeded in building a very good team, we’ll see down the road if perhaps they are more than that. We brought in the kind of people who we feel we could go to war with. We’re ready for a good and exciting season.”
“I spent many years working year-round without any real kind of break, and I wanted to rest as much as possible. The day-to-day work, building the roster and all of the tactical work preparing for the start of the season, made everything else around seem unnecessary from my point of view. I wanted to keep a low profile. Also, after all these years I’ve learned that if you talk too much, you’re working less. We succeeded in doing almost everything we wanted to do regarding the professional needs of the team, and we did so in the best way possible.”
