{"id":500831,"date":"2017-10-12T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/coach-spahija-this-win-is-a-big-step-forward-for-us\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T09:43:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T06:43:44","slug":"coach-spahija-this-win-is-a-big-step-forward-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/coach-spahija-this-win-is-a-big-step-forward-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Coach Spahija: &#8220;This win is a big step forward for us.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"responsive-video-container\" style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UYjoZhpQq-U\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span>Though it&#8217;s only the first game, the joy on the &#8220;Yellows&#8221; bench did not go unnoticed after the 88-17 win over Bamberg in the EuroLeague season opener. After winning the &#8220;Winner Cup&#8221; and the first game of the Israeli &#8220;Winner League&#8221; Maccabi marked a &#8220;V&#8221; in its European <\/span><\/span><span id=\"docs-internal-guid-da6ce9b5-1b98-9d0a-185b-3e6102354b88\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">top tier<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span> competition as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span>Coach Spahija summarized the game: &#8220;We played an amazing fourth quarter (33-12). On Tuesday we had too many turnovers which <\/span><\/span><span id=\"docs-internal-guid-da6ce9b5-1b98-9d0a-185b-3e6102354b88\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">was<\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"> expected as it was the team&#8217;s first game, and tonight no less than seven players played <\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">their<\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"> first ever EuroLeague game, and this win is a huge step forward for us. Our defense was the key <\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">for<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span> our win tonight.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span id=\"docs-internal-guid-da6ce9b5-1b98-9d0a-185b-3e6102354b88\">I know Pierre, and I convinced him to give up on the NBA. If he&#8217;ll continue playing like he played tonight the door to the NBA will always be open for him. He was amazing on offense tonight. It&#8217;s just the first game no one wins or loses the championship in October. Baskonia &#038; Olympiacos? We have games in the Israeli league and that&#8217;s where our focus is.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span id=\"docs-internal-guid-da6ce9b5-1b98-9d0a-185b-3e6102354b88\">The gams MVP Pierre Jackson added: &#8220;The three&#8217;s? I&#8217;ve been making shots for my whole life. I hope we&#8217;ll get used to such performances. I got the confidence tonight from the coach and my teammates, as long as will have this confidence I&#8217;ll be alright. I never look at the stats as long as we win. We have a great team and the coach did a good job at getting us come together as a team. We did what he told us to do.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \tMichael Roll who scored 16 points said: &#8220;For three and a half quarters, we stuck to our game plan, it was a tough game. It&#8217;s just one game and everyone on the team is pretty much new, so we are very happy with this win.&#8221;<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi head coach Neven Spahija was happy with his team&#8217;s performance in its win over Bamberg, but also put things in perspective: &#8220;It&#8217;s just the first game, no one wins or loses the championship in October&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":500829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-500831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500833,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500831\/revisions\/500833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500831"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=500831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}