Why the writer says Maccabi Tel Aviv’s championship was good for basketball
The columnist, who says he is neither a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan nor an anti-Hapoel Tel Aviv supporter, argues that Maccabi’s win in the finals and its Israeli basketball championship were ultimately a victory for sportsmanship. He contrasts that with the way Hapoel Tel Aviv owner Ofer Yannay has managed his club over the past two years, saying Yannay may be a successful businessman but still needs to learn the “spirit of sport.”
He writes that clubs exist first and foremost for their fans, and says Yannay missed repeated chances to build a healthy relationship with Hapoel’s supporters. The piece says tensions deepened after the club, once a classic supporters’ team before Yannay’s purchase, cut ties with the fan association and moved home games to the Ya’akov Eliyahu Hall. The writer quotes Yannay as saying, “They are not coming, they will not come to Drive In either, and they are not coming because of me,” and says rebuilding that bond should be a central goal. He notes Yannay has already understood one thing, that a team’s home arena is where its legacy is built, even if it is smaller than the Yad Eliyahu Hall and brings in less revenue.
The column also argues that winning culture is not about winning at any cost, but about long-term identity, values, and group cohesion. In his view, Maccabi survived a difficult season, with injuries but with a stable core, while Hapoel’s roster and management were weakened by a breakdown in structure. He cites reports that Hapoel offered watches worth $50,000 to players who did not return to Israel after the recent Iran-related events, saying even a watch worth a million dollars cannot build a team.
The writer says a club is built through shared adversity and by creating a balanced squad, not two separate groups or by making Israeli players feel like second-class options. He adds that he is unsure whether this was Yannay’s strategy or the result of coach Dimitris Itoudis’s arrogance, but says the club’s handling of foreign players and its sidelining of Israelis hurt the team by the end of the season, when many foreigners were no longer in the squad. The column ends by warning Yannay that if he is in this for the long haul, he should treat it as a marathon, not a sprint, and focus on building the club rather than publicity and controversy.
