Jerusalem’s BCL campaign ends with a thud

To be honest, Hapoel Jerusalem’s Basketball Champions League campaign became an unmitigated disaster.

After running up a perfect record of 3-0 in the Round of 16 Group Stage, Ilias Kantzouris’s club couldn’t figure out how to win again, as the Reds lost three straight continental clashes while losing one Israeli league game after the next. Defeats to Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Holon and Hapoel Tel Aviv, to go along with losses to Kiryat Ata and Hapoel Haifa, sent Jerusalem spiraling out of control which ultimately led to the coach’s dismissal less than 24 hours after Tuesday’s 98-87 loss to Karsiyaka.

The writing was on the wall for Jerusalem to crash hard out of Europe – with absolutely embarrassing defensive play and with no rhythm on offense whatsoever. Anyone who has watched the Reds over the past couple of months has seen a once-well-oiled machine turn into a broken-down clunker that forgot how to defend and could never find the right rotations on offense.

The Jerusalem team that defeated Tenerife in convincing fashion not too long ago disappeared as quickly as 1-2-3, never to be heard from again.

The Reds were riding high after that victory and were already punching their ticket to the quarterfinals, except they forgot that there were still three more games to go. Despite holding almost every tie-breaker, Kanztouris’s team gave up a bundle of points in the final defeat to Karsiyaka.

That made it two Israeli teams that were bounced out of Europe by Turkish squads in a week after Hapoel Tel Aviv was ousted by Besiktas in EuroCup quarterfinal play.

Sure, there are plenty of excuses that Jerusalem management, staff and players can come up with and there is no doubt that many are legitimate. From the Hamas attacks on October 7 that created havoc for the entire Israeli sports scene sending clubs to play abroad for a large swath of time, to head coach Aleksandar Dzikic departing due to the war, there is no one who can say that these huge factors played a big part in the Reds BCL campaign.

Same situation for Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Holon and Hapoel Tel Aviv

However, this has been the same situation that Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Holon and Hapoel Tel Aviv have all faced as well, not to mention Maccabi Tel Aviv FC and Maccabi Haifa FC on the pitch in UEFA Conference League action.

But Jerusalem needed to make better decisions than the ones it did in finding a replacement for Dzikic. with the club appointing a coach that was blasted by the same Reds team last year when he headed AEK in the BCL playoffs. That in itself should have been a massive warning sign that sports director Yonatan Alon should have been very wary of.

When asked about why Alon himself didn’t step into the coach’s shoes, he said that this would not be the right move for the franchise and the system that is being built. There was no question that Kantzouris had to be shown the door as there was no way, shape or form he could be back on the sidelines this coming Sunday night when Jerusalem visits Bnei Herzliya.

What options does Jerusalem have at this point? Bring in another foreign coach that will take tons of time to figure out what he can do with the players he has in an imperfectly built squad?

That was already done with the Kantzouris hiring and we saw where that went.

That leaves it to finding an Israeli caretaker-type coach for the balance of the season and then from there most probably blow up the entire team and restart with anew. The problem is there aren’t many Israeli coaches available that Jerusalem can consider.

There is Erez Bittman, who was with the Denmark National Team for many years, Arik Shivek, who is currently involved with the Dutch national team program, Ariel Beit Halachmi, who is the Israel National Team coach, as well as a number of others who can step in for a few months, get through the rest of the campaign and then restart anew for the 2024-25 season. For the time being, assistant coaches Shai Olerarczyk and Theodoros Giannakopoulos will take the reins 

with Alon helping them out, which also may be the best answer for the balance of the season.

There is obviously a roster construction problem that whoever will become coach will also adopt, and while there may be some small steps that the club can make by perhaps bringing in a player or two to fill those gaps, there is no obvious quick fix.

There is no backup point guard for Speedy Smith as Bryton Lemar is at best a second guard, there is no forward  to do the dirty work to free up Zach Hankins like there was last season in Mareks Mejeris or Siim Sander Vene, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are two Israelis – Yovel Zoosman and Or Cornelius – at the same position, which has created issues for both, and the list goes on and on and on.

The one positive that can be taken from the past few months is that neither the coach or the players threw one another under the bus the entire time. But even right after Tuesday’s game, Kantzouris said that the values need to be checked, with the question of whether he was referring to the players or management.

Next up is a meeting between the management and the fans slated for Tuesday March 26, sandwiched between the league game at Herzliya and a State Cup clash at home against Hapoel Galil Elyon.

The fans have been all over social media ripping the team to pieces in critical fashion and perhaps this may not be the most opportune time to hear from them in person if there isn’t any concrete news.

There are a lot of pieces to pick up now for Jerusalem as it will try to finish the season and then head into the new campaign with goals and milestones. While management would love to play in the Euroleague, Hapoel needs to build up some sort of consistent tradition in continental play and being ousted in the BCL Round of 16 group stage is going to do it no favors in trying to reach its desired continental goals.

There is a lot of hard work to be done and Jerusalem, from top to bottom, will need to roll up its sleeves and get ready to put in a tremendous amount of elbow grease to find that consistency in building a franchise both on the court and off of it.

As for other Israeli clubs in European action this week, Hapoel Holon defeated Murcia 64-60 in its final Basketball Champions League Round of 16 Group Stage game but was eliminated from advancing to the quarterfinals due to point differential after Promitheas downed AEK 79-67. In the Euroleague, Maccabi Tel Aviv downed Villeurbanne 98-90 as Wade Baldwin scored 30 points to help the yellow-and-blue chalk up yet another victory as it has now won four 

Euroleague games in a row to raise their record to 17-13 and inch closer to the postseason.