{"id":506422,"date":"2020-12-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/dragan-is-very-talented-we-help-each-other\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T11:50:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T08:50:30","slug":"dragan-is-very-talented-we-help-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/dragan-is-very-talented-we-help-each-other\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Dragan is very talented. We help each other&#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\/cdxFcYuSYgI\" 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<p dir=\"ltr\"> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv beat Ironi Ness Ziona on the road 65:58, improving their Israeli Winner League record to 5:1. The Israeli champions held a 20 point margin midway through the third quarter, but Brad Greenberg&#8217;s squad didn&#8217;t raise the white flag, came back, and even took the lead in the fourth quarter. However, Giannis Sfairopoulos&#8217;s group ramped it up on both ends of the court in the final minutes, earning a well-fought road victory.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Dragan Bender led all Yellow &amp; Blue scorers with 19 points while grabbing 11 rebounds, Tyler Dorsey concluded his night with 16 points, and Ante Zizic provided 12 points and 9 rebounds. Maccabi&#8217;s road trip continues as they&#8217;ll depart to Spain, facing Saski Baskonia on Thursday night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I&#8217;m satisfied because Ness Ziona is a good offensive team with players that can score well, but our defense didn&#8217;t allow them to play their game, allowing only 58 points&#8221;, Summarized head coach&nbsp;<strong>Giannis Sfairopoulos<\/strong>&nbsp;after the win. &#8220;Even when they got the lead, we found a way offensively to score while playing really well in the last quarter, allowing only 11 points, which gave us the win. We learned that we could win games with strong defensive play&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;Zoosman, DiBartolomeo, and Casspi will need more time, they&#8217;re participating and playing, but they aren&#8217;t in their best form&#8221;, Said Sfairopoulos about the progress of the returnees. &#8220;They are working really well, and we need to be patient because there&#8217;s no magic stick that will get them in ten days into top shape after missing a lengthy stretch due to injury&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I feel better, in basketball, sometimes there are stretches, it&#8217;s normal, and it happens, but the most important thing is to step it up and figure it out&#8221;, Said&nbsp;<strong>Ante Zizic<\/strong>,&nbsp;who finished the contest with 12 points and 9 boards. &#8220;I think I did a better job tonight after the game against Holon. Dragan is a very talented player, we are both tall, and we help one another on the defensive end. Today we opened the game aggressively, closing the paint really well&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/casspi20drives20169.jpg\" style=\"font-size: 14px; width: 980px; height: 551px;\" class=\"wp-image-506420 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/casspi20drives20169.jpg 980w, https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/casspi20drives20169-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/casspi20drives20169-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 980px) 100vw, 980px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ante Zizic praised his countryman, who scored 19 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in the win over Ness Ziona. Sfairopoulos: &#8220;Zoosman, DiBartolomeo, and Casspi will need more time, we need to be patient&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-506422","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\/506422","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=506422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506425,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506422\/revisions\/506425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506422"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=506422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}