{"id":506454,"date":"2020-12-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/this-was-our-best-defensive-game-so-far\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T11:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T08:51:15","slug":"this-was-our-best-defensive-game-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/this-was-our-best-defensive-game-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;This was our best defensive game so far&#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\/zE2Xh336qcs\" 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 pulled out a 67:63 win over Saski Baskonia in Vitoria, Spain, as part of the 13th EuroLeague fixture. After a tremendous defensive display, Giannis Sfairopoulos&#8217;s squad started the impressive comeback midway through the second quarter.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Othello Hunter led the rally with great play on both ends of the court, Chris Jones provided 10 points, and 4 rebounds as Yovel Zoosman made his EuroLeague season debut. Tyler Dorsey finished as the Yellow &amp; Blue&#8217;s top scorer with 15 points and grabbed a clutch offensive rebound in the late minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I want to congratulate our players for the good game we played tonight, especially on the defensive end&#8221;, Said head coach&nbsp;<strong>Giannis Sfairopoulos<\/strong>&nbsp;after the road victory. &#8220;Baskonia is a good offensive team, and we knew before if we won&#8217;t play defense, we wouldn&#8217;t have a chance. We followed our game plan, and we had our best defensive game so far&#8221;.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;Allowing only 9 points in the fourth quarter was very important. Baskonia&#8217;s best scoring quarter, especially here at home, is the fourth&#8221;, Added Sfairopoulos about the keys for the win. &#8220;Offensively, I think we moved the ball, played smart, tried to attack their defensive weak spots. We controlled the rhythm of the game, and that was very important&#8221;.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;We did everything the right way tonight after we had some games in the past that we lost in the last minute&#8221;, Explained the Yellow &amp; Blue coach. &#8220;We were very concentrated, especially at the end in the crucial moments&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;We all played great defense, and we tried to get back to the Maccabi style of basketball&#8221;, Said&nbsp;<strong>Othello Hunter<\/strong>. &#8220;Everybody fought hard for the win, that&#8217;s all that matters. We wanted to come in here and try to fight. We got a great team, and we just did what we have to do&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I would say the stops we were getting were the key for us&#8221;., Told&nbsp;<strong>Tyler Dorsey<\/strong>, who finished as Maccabi&#8217;s top scorer with 15 points. &#8220;We had a game plan coming into the game. Other than Fall, we controlled everybody else, and that&#8217;s how we got the win tonight&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"980\" height=\"420\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/eb20vs20bas209802.jpg\" style=\"font-size: 14px; width: 980px; height: 420px;\" class=\"wp-image-506451 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/eb20vs20bas209802.jpg 980w, https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/eb20vs20bas209802-300x129.jpg 300w, https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/eb20vs20bas209802-768x329.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 980px) 100vw, 980px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Yellow &#038; Blue summarized the road win over Baskonia. Sfairopoulos: &#8220;We controlled the rhythm of the game&#8221;. Hunter: &#8220;Everybody fought hard for the win&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-506454","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\/506454","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=506454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506457,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506454\/revisions\/506457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506454"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=506454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}