Breakdown: AS Monaco vs. Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv

Source EuroLeague A battle between two thoroughly enjoyable teams to watch is soon set to take place in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs, as AS Monaco and Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv come up against one another in the 4-5 matchup. The fourth-seed Monaco ended the regular season with a 21-13 record, just one win more than the fifth-seed Maccabi, which ended the campaign with a 20-14 mark. There’s not much to separate the two sides, who both come into this series feeling confident about their chances of making it to the Final Four, which adds even more intrigue to a fascinating series.

Home team tends to succeed in this matchup

Since Monaco’s rise to the EuroLeague ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, the French club and Maccabi have faced off four times. In those games, each team has two victories apiece – and they have all been triumphs for the home side. This season, Maccabi downed Monaco 78-70 in Tel Aviv back in Round 3, before Monaco exacted revenge, 86-67, in the principality in Round 26. As tends to be the case when playing at home – and even more so in a playoff series – there tends to be more scoring contributions from a wider range of players. For example, Maccabi had five players score 8 or more points in its win over Monaco in Israel, whereas in its road defeat just three players reached that mark. Conversely, for Monaco, four players scored 8 or more points in its defeat at Maccabi, but then seven players did so when it won in Round 26.

Add to that the fact that these two had the best home records this season and the case becomes even stronger. Monaco went 13-4 at Salle Gaston Medecin, good enough for the joint second-best mark in the EuroLeague, but Maccabi led the way this year with a 15-2 record at Menora Mivtachim Arena. The good news for Monaco and its head coach, Sasa Obradovic, is that it can lean on home-court advantage in this series, meaning that – should the history of Monaco vs. Maccabi repeat itself in the playoffs – it has the chance to go up 2-0 before travelling to Tel Aviv. If, as has happened in the past, Maccabi is able to protect its home court, then a decisive do-or-die Game 5 would take place in Monaco. Perhaps one of the main keys to the series will be which team can steal a game on the road.

A turbulent Monaco vs. a red-hot Maccabi

Monaco may have finished ahead of Maccabi in the regular-season standings, but Coach Obradovic’s squad didn’t have the steadiest of finishes to their campaign. After putting together a five-game winning streak between Rounds 26 and 30, Monaco lost three of its last four games. However, despite the disappointing run of results to close the regular season, it is worth noting that Monaco secured its place in the playoffs after its Round 30 win at Valencia Basket. With a strong position in terms of home-court advantage, it was perhaps only natural that the team took its foot off the gas. The important thing will now be to quickly rediscover its best level before it is too late.

For Maccabi, it is a different story. Led by head coach Oded Kattash, the Israeli side enters the playoffs in red-hot form, having gone 7-1 in its last eight games. Between Rounds 27 and 32, Maccabi surged up the standings and solidified its spot as a playoff team in the process, having previously spent some weeks on the outside looking in. There was a narrow defeat to Zalgiris Kaunas, 68-67, in Round 33, but that day did see Maccabi officially reach the playoffs as it lost by a margin of -1. Then, in the last game of the regular season, Maccabi managed to overcome Real Madrid 100-96 in overtime, giving it another boost as it heads into the playoffs.

Great matchups wherever you look

All over the court, there are interesting battles to monitor in this series. Starting with the guards, two of the EuroLeague’s best backcourts come head-to-head, as Monaco’s trio of Mike James, Jordan Loyd and Elie Okobo – the latter of whom comes off the bench – look to get the better of Maccabi’s duo of Lorenzo Brown and Wade Baldwin. In particular, James and Brown will try to dictate the pace of their teams’ offenses and make everything tick, while Okobo and Baldwin play more as combo guards. Maccabi is also able to call upon Darrun Hilliard and John DiBartolomeo, who provide important minutes off the bench. For both teams, finding a way to slow down the other side’s backcourt will be one of the big keys to the game.

Then, at the two forward positions, the intriguing matchups continue. Maccabi’s do-it-all forward Bonzie Colson has taken to the EuroLeague like a duck to water in his debut campaign in the competition, but he has a tough task on his hands up against Monaco’s own Swiss army knife, Alpha Diallo, who regularly makes his presence felt on both ends of the floor. Jake Cohen started seven of Maccabi’s last eight games down the stretch, yet the impact of Maccabi’s two forwards off the bench cannot be underestimated, as Jarell Martin and Roman Sorkin averaged a combined 14.8 points per game. Monaco almost always starts the defensive-minded John Brown at the 4, so he will be tasked with trying to limit the impact of Martin and Sorkin.

Finally, in terms of big men, two of the most athletic centers in the EuroLeague – Donta Hall of Monaco and Josh Nebo of Maccabi – are preparing to bring their high-flying dunks into the playoffs, with Hall and Nebo having combined for many Magic Moments during the regular season. However, while Nebo regularly starts for Maccabi, Hall tends to begin the game as Donatas Motiejunas‘s backup. Motiejunas, who was born in Kaunas, the venue of this year’s Final Four, looks to use his mixture of strength and finesse in the paint, so how he matches up with Nebo from the off should be intriguing. Maccabi, meanwhile, has tended to give Sorkin minutes at the 5 when Nebo is on the bench, with the 26-year-old using his energy to grab offensive rebounds and score around the rim.

AS Monaco vs. Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv