A newcomer, living in the middle of a war and playing his home games in exile, is the surprising leader of the Euroleague. Hapoel Tel Aviv leads the table with nine wins in 12 matches, one more than Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and Red Star, despite their particular conditions. The group coached by the Greek Dimitris Itoudis and led on the pitch by the Serbian playmaker Vasilije Micic will welcome Real Madrid this Tuesday (7pm, Movistar) at the Botevgard Arena, in Bulgaria, the first time they have hosted in this pavilion after playing their previous home games at the 8888 Arena in Sofia, 65 kilometers away. It is the forced exodus from October 2023 due to Israel’s massacre in Gaza until, starting December 1, both Maccabi and they can return to their camps in Tel Aviv.
Hapoel debuts in the Euroleague thanks to last year’s victory in the Eurocup, beating Valencia in the semi-final and Gran Canaria in the final. And at their debut they reigned as the team with the highest scoring of the tournament (92.1 points per game against 89.3 for Panathinaikos and Paris) and the team with the best success rate in field goals (52.3% against 49.4% for Baskonia) and in triples (40.8% against 39.6% for Barça).
The 55-year-old Itoudis, two-time European champion coach with CSKA Moscow (2016 and 2019), manages the bench. On the pitch, Micic is in command, the 31-year-old point guard who returned to Europe after two seasons in the NBA between Oklahoma, Charlotte and Phoenix: 101 games with 6.8 and 3.9 assists in 19 minutes on average. Hapoel made headlines this summer with the signing of another double Euroleague winner (2021 and 2022 with Efes), making him the highest paid player in Europe: 5.6 million per season compared to Nunn’s 5.3 million at Panathinaikos and Vezenkov’s 4.1 million at Olympiacos. The checkbook prevailed over Real Madrid’s interest.
Micic takes the lead and the guard unloads the artillery Elijah Bryant, Europe’s top scorer (15 points) and rebounder (5.8), as well as the player with the highest rating (20.6). Blakeney, Chris Jones, Oturu and Motley are other notable pieces of a 16-man team of which half are Americans, with five Israelis, a Canadian, a Serbian and a Brazilian under the command of a Greek.
Hapoel opened the proceedings by beating Barcelona in Sofia (103-87). Also among the victims were Valencia at the Roig Arena (93-100) and Baskonia (114-89), who today challenge Scariolo’s Madrid. “It’s a good time to face the best,” the white coach commented on Monday; “They have demonstrated this with excellent performances, a very high offensive level and a very solid defensive level. They deserve that position in the table. We have many sources of fire to limit. They have an internal partner superior in the Euroleague (Oturu and Motley), very athletic, and on the perimeter they attack you from two or three different positions. It is the result of Itoudis’ good work and high-quality planning this summer.”
The owner of Hapoel is the entrepreneur Ofer Yannay, founder of the company Nofar Energy, valued at 1 billion dollars, a Zionist who had no problem spending part of his fortune on an advertising campaign under the slogan Israel will win. Nor did he bother to pay the 5,000 euros that the Euroleague fined him for denigrating Pedro Martínez, Valencia’s coach, when he questioned the safety of playing in Israel again (the orange team will visit Maccabi on December 18 and Hapoel on February 5). Yannay accused the Spanish coach of showing “hostility and hatred against the State of Israel and its people.” The businessman also forced his club to delete a message on X in which the entity supported a strike to negotiate the release of hostages.
“We’re the best team in the world outside of the NBA. The goal is to get to the Final Four,” says the grown-up Yannay. For now, under the leadership of Itoudis and Micic, they are the leaders of the Euroleague.
Euroleague results and standings.
