Maccabi - UnicajaMATCH PREVIEWMaccabi Electra will welcome a legend back to the sidelines when it hosts Unicaja in a pivotal Group A matchup on Thursday at Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena. Head coach Pini Gershon and Maccabi achieved greatness together with three continental titles and two more trips to the Euroleague final in the past decade and now they are together again as Gershon tries to spark Maccabi after a 2-2 start. And they are fortunate to be hosting a banged-up team in Unicaja, which in addition to its regular absences of long-term injury victims Berni Rodriguez, Alfonso Sanchez and German Gabriel, will also be without star power forward Marcus Haislip.
However Unicaja can count on point guard Carlos Cabezas, who is back from an ankle injury to play at the site of his greatest individual performance. Cabezas scored a career-best 32 points and dished 6 assists in the 2006-07 season opener in Tel Aviv, although that was not enough to lead his team to victory. Now Cabezas joins forces with Omar Cook, Joseph Gomis and Thomas Kelati to challenge Maccabi’s backcourt, which is led by point guard Carlos Arroyo, former Unicaja scorer Marcus Brown and veteran Tal Burstein, with Tre Simmons adding depth. The small forward matchup could see the teams go smaller with Jiri Welsch for Unicaja and Jason Williams for Maccabi, or bigger with Carlos Jimenez for the visitors and Omri Casspi for the hosts. Jimenez may be needed at power forward to make up for Haislip’s absence, too. There he woul play alongside centers Boniface NDong and Robert Archibald, with youngster Vitor Faverani also in the mix. Maccabi’s interior rotation features only one player from the past Gershon era, reserve Yaniv Green, so the likes of D’Or Fischer, Esteban Batista and Lior Eliyahu will all try to earn extra minutes from the new coach. Though it will be interesting to see what new tricks Gershon has up his sleeve after only a few days back on the job, he will not be the only coaching great on the floor. Aito Garcia Reneses will surely have his pumped up for this clash, which could have a major impact on the race for spots in the Top 16. Unicaja’s injuries and Maccabi’s coaching change make it hard to pinpoint what the keys to victory will be, but what’s for certain is that with the combined talent of both teams and the knowledge of two of the world’s most creative coaches, this game will be filled with non-stop action for 40 minutes.
BETTING ANALYSIS
There are 2 key news for this game: 1) Pini Gershon is back to Maccabi head coach position 2) Haislip is out for Malaga while Cabezas is probable after 3 weeks being out due the leg injury.
And there is one quote I would like to quote here which tells all about Gershon and changes we will see in Maccabi soon.
This will not be a defensive team," said Pini, who built high-tempo and exciting basketball teams in his previous tenures at Maccabi, leading the club to the 2001, 2004 and 2005 European titles. "Most of the players fit my system and I think this team is capable of scoring 85-90 points a game.
I think that even I would be a good coach for Maccabi because this team have plenty of talent and offensive power but those players needs freedom in offense. Birinboim tried to learn Maccabi to play European basketball but he forgot that he has offensive minded roster and if player don't know the basics of defense you can't learn him to play in defense. New coach will switch Maccabi style into offensive and very soon we will see old well known run-and-gun Maccabi style.
Unicaja is a team which can accept fast basketball easily especially now when they have only one real center Ndong. I expect Unicaja to use some small-ball tactics with 3 small players being on the court on the same time and this will make this game tempo quite high. Unfortunately for Malaga right now they will need time to find new offensive leader because Haislip was all-around player in offense in last games with more than 20 points scored in average. Welsh will be their main option to score points but if they will fail to find another scorers there is big chance that this game can turn into nightmare for Unicaja.
I see 2 good bets for this game. First is Maccabi (-5) @ 1.71 (self-made bet at Bet365.com additional spread market). I think that offensively Unicaja would not be able to reply to Maccabi points. Pinni is a coach who never stop his team when they starting to trash opponent and I doubt that he will change something especially now when his team needs a psyhoplogical boost as well as himself. And another pick I like today is Maccabi to score over 80 points. They will enjoy their new offensive style and having crazy home crowd support I expect them to score in the 85-90 points range like Gershon promised in his first interview.
Prediction: Maccabi 89 - 76 Unicaja Pick: Maccabi (-5) @ 1.71 bet365
Pick: Maccabi over 80.5 @ 1.83 5/10 Sportingbet 
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