The yellows will play in their home away from home for the first time. Sorkin: “Our hearts are with Israel, but our minds try to focus on basketball”
Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv will host Bayern Munich in Belgrade on Thursday (9:05 PM Israel time, 2:05 PM ET), marking their first home-away-from-home game. The encounter will be held behind closed doors in the historic Aleksandar Nikolic Hall, where the yellows will try to win a second game in a row for the first time this season.
“Bayern pose a number of challenges”, warned head coach Oded Kattash, “They have an excellent new coach who tries to bring stuff he did in Real Madrid. They have dominant guards who can shoot, although it does not show in the statistics. We will have to do a good defensive game. For us, the key is controlling the tempo. We want to run through good defense and rebounding and limit our turnovers”.
Captain John DiBartolomeo spoke about the nearly 250 people held captive in Gaza: “What happened was terrible, the hostages are in our thoughts and prayers, that they will return home to their families safely. The support, the energy and the enthusiasm of our fans carried us so many times before and we gonna miss them, but we will come ready to play and make them proud”.
“We are excited to play and want to build on what we did last week”, said Roman Sorkin, “Our hearts are in Israel, but our heads try to focus on basketball. We wish the hostages are back home soon”.
Bayern started the season with two victories and four defeats, suffering from low three-point percentage and scoring only 70 points per game. The Bavarians appointed two-time EuroLeague champion Pablo Laso as head coach, and he pulled his strings to land a big time addition to the squad in Serge Ibaka, who was chosen as NBA 1st Team All-Defensive member three times.
The Maccabists hold the edge in the head-to-head record against Bayern, winning seven games compared with the Germans’ five. In last season’s home game, Maccabi won by a score of 90:82, led by Lorenzo Brown’s 27 points.
