FanPost

A belated and extremely long recap of the Maccabi Tel Aviv game

Editor's Note: We've finally got Barnesgasm's recap of the Knicks-MTA game, and it was well worth the wait. LOLs abound...

Sorry my recap is so delayed, but I had a big-ass paper due Friday, so I started writing a recap at like 1:30 thursday night, and it was moderately incoherent, and I got about halfway through and then I didn't save it, so I'm starting over from scratch.

I wouldn't be so damn eager to recap, but the Maccabi game was awesome and surreal. It's not weird to see a bunch of Hasidic folk hanging out on a street corner, it was weird to see around a thousand of them milling around outside MSG wearing yellow and blue jerseys, scarves, faces painted, flags flying, that type of shit. MSG security is notably intense, which was actually something I was worried about pre-game. Apparantly, Maccabi is a sort of national Israeli icon, since basketball is Israel's most popular sport, and the team has won 47 championships including 11 out of 12.

I put on an Allan Houston jersey before leaving my house, then contemplate suicide, and end up going to the game in a polo shirt.

Proceeds from the game went to Migdahl Ohr, an Israeli charity, and my parents willingly bought me tickets for this one after hearing that one. By the way, I'm jewish, in case you couldn't figure that out.

Every year, there's a new wall of 30 foot tall pictures of Knicks and Rangers leading into MSG. This year, it's Marbury, Curry, Lee, Randolph, Q, Renaldo, Crawford, and Nate, and for each player, it gives their name, "role", and nickname. I have some corrections I'd like to make to the roles and nicknames:
Q: "The Marksman", seeing as he's like our second best rebounder, not that accurate a name.
Steph: "The Floor General". This is my role, and nobody else can have it. Not even Stephon Marbury.
Jamal: I have never, ever, heard anybody call Jamal Crawford "Mal". Acceptable replacements would have been Crawdaddy or Chilly Bones.
Renaldo: Taz is ok, Humpty is better.

There is one ad for the team on the escalators with Channing Frye. Whoops.

The first mind-fuckingly weird thing was that we checked into our seats, dropped our shit off, and then went to hit up Ranch 1. I pulled up and ordered one of them grilled chicken sandwiches, and the sassy food vendor that works at every single stand in the garden cuts me off and does her "another motherfucking dumbass customer" routine, and informs me that if I would have read the sign, they are only serving kosher food tonight, and if I would please stand to the side and let the next customer through. WHAT THE FUCK? Options include pastrami and corned beef on rye and potato knishes. Not trusting the Garden's pastrami, we went a few booths over to where they had hot dogs,

Same old opening sequence, the announcer seems like he's on downers tonight, though. He announces that tonight's game is being played under National Basketball Association rules, which prompts an attempted "USA! USA!" chant, which just gets a lot of weird looks.

The crowd is electric. Vonteego Cummings brings the ball up with Maccabi up 6-2, and the crowd starts cheering "MACCA-BI! MACCA-BI!" I look around, behind us are around fifteen people locking arms with a 20 foot long sign in hebrew, further back are about ten guys in Israel hockey uniforms jumping up and down and yelling things I can't understand. New York is soon down 12-3, and Steph gets booed shooting free throws. Someone throws confetti with every Maccabi in the section to our right. The first quarter was insane. I really started rooting hard for Maccabi, but it kind of faded after a while.

Marcus Fizer really should be in the league. He owns the opening minutes.

Vonteego Cummings hits a 3, and I say, "You just can't leave Vonteego Cummings open like that. Everybody knows that." He hits like, 6 threes. Dude is unstoppable. Also, we started the world's best and only "Vonteego" chant in the history of organized sports. He ends the night leading all scorers.

Zach Randolph wears a really ugly headband for like 5 minutes, then ditches it. He's not that good tonight, but still has like 18 points or something. As a general comment on the game, the Knicks looked like they were playing like shit, but won by about 30, so chalk it up to the competition.

I want to start a Malik Rose Chair-Pulling Society. We will follow Malik around and just yell "PULL IT! PULL THE CHAIR! NOW IS THE TIME, MALIK! PULL THE CHAIR!" every time he does everything. The four of us did that all night long, and it was pretty damn enjoyable. He didn't pull the chair, though, but when he came out of the game at the end, this kid in an Allan Houston jersey got up from his seat in the second row and high fived him, and you could see this look in Malik's eyes where you could tell he just wanted to go "yoink!"

The amount of jewish stereotypes tonight is ridiculous. As a self-loathing jew, I see around me some rabbi looking guys, some jewish grandparents, some lawyer looking fools rocking the glasses, nose, and business suit, and of course, the family of five behind me that brought all their own refreshments to avoid MSG's prices. We've come a long way, and I'm proud of my heritage.

At halftime, a rabbi with a long long grey beard comes out, fumbles around in English, and starts reciting the Sh'ma. Good shit. Towards the end, his mike starts to break up, and the last 30 seconds of his time on stage is just loud static noises. Not surprisingly, there is video of him on youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TKbesiRQ4JY

Mardy Collins is a harbinger of doom. He goes up for about 7 layups that easily could have been uncontested dunks. What a dick.

They give out free media guides, and they're very poorly translated into English and also just kind of funny in general. I will probably have a son of dippin post soon on the subject, because foreigners are hilarious, but I can hit you up with some highlights, coming from an feature where they talked to all the players about their likes and dislikes, this comes from Yotam Halperin's segment:

Favorite food: pancakes
I'm afraid of: stop playing basketball
Makes me mad: traitors

Yotam, who got drafted by the Sonics a few years back, isn't NBA ready, he can't shoot, isn't particularly fast, and didn't make good decisions. He airmails a pass into the crowd, and my friend says "I think he saw a traitor in the first row..."

Fellow draft pick Lior Eliyahu, on the other hand, could be in the league now, I think, if he didn't have to serve military duty. He's a big guy, but athletic and with a good shot, except he has literally no handles. I'll quote from the bio Maccabi gives of him:
"He did not disappoint and his integration was one never seen before it was so quick. His never ending hands produced points, slam dunks, and balance".
Watch out for those never-ending hands on an NBA team near you. On the downside, he gets skeeted on by Nate Robinson, who drives against him, spins, and puts a lefty hook off the glass.
Another jew is Omri Casspi, who is like 19, a center, and can shoot. Remember the name.

I should mention I like Tel Aviv's jerseys, yellow, blue, large blue uni numbers on the shorts. However, it would really suck if the Knicks got sponsored by a chocolate company and had to wear like, "Hershey" on their chest.

Some dumbass company buys an ad on the floor that says "The Prime Grill Salutes Isreal". In my point of view, if you pay thousands of dollars for an ad that's 5 words long, get someone to spellcheck. I conclude that what they really meant is that if someone were to salute you while at the Prime Grill, that salute would not be a figment of your imagination, and therefore, it would be real, but instead of just saying "The prime grill salutes are real", they wanted to be kind of ghetto about it, so they fucked up their conjugations, and were like "THE PRIME GRILL SALUTES IS REEEEEALLLLL, SON!"

They have a dance-off between some dude from Israel and a woman from the Bronx, who is clearly a better dancer, but loses. I lost sleep over the fact that the woman from the Bronx lost. A travesty.

Wilson Chandler: Impressive.

On the subject of dancers, the Knicks City Dancers were not present. Because there is no higher power in life, the Knicks City Kids were. I despise those children.

On the subject of children, this really cute 3 year old in a yarmulke and a Maccabi jersey was in the seat next to us, and when we got up at halftime, we came back, and he had curled up and fallen asleep across two of our seats. We moved, because how the fuck are you gonna wake a cute-ass 3 year old?

The Knicks have a new LCD scoreboard that doesn't tell you as many stats as it used to. Also, their announcer is really depressed for some reason, and instead of yelling "RANDOOOOOOOOOOOLPH MOOORRIS!", he just says "That was Randolph Morris." He also came up and sucked the life forces out of the three year old kid next to us with a straw.

No Take Me Home or Go NY Go NY Go tonight. They did, however, show this creepy commercial for El Al in which this guy pulled this woman on a string through the clouds, or something.

By the way, El Al also distributed thundersticks instructions for "to inflate", "to deflate", and "to bang".

To bang: Hold Cheerstix in each hand, 12-18 inches apart, and slam together repeatedly.

I shit you not.

Garbage time wrap-up: With 8 minutes left, the team is up 30 or so. Rod Wilmont comes in, and around 3 minutes later, it's official: Morris, Nichols, Chandler, Jordan, and Walker D. Russell Jr. check into the game. Morris played around ten minutes, and was just stronger than the Maccabi defenders on offense, like, really toying with them, but kind of sucked on defense, resulting in 6 fouls in ten minutes. When he fouls out, Wilmont, who has a sweet haircut, comes back in.

I'm so sad that Nichols won't make the team. Before the ref gives him a ball on an inbounds pass, he pretends like he's shooting. He goes on to miss a layup. I hate Allan Houston now.

Wow, Walker D. Russell Jr. is trying to run shit. He airballs a 3, goes iso one time and forces up an 18 footer, and tries to bring the ball up the court even though it's clearly Jared Jordan's fault. Sorry, Walker D. Texas Russell Ranger Jr., but it's not happening.

This 5'11 18 year old white guy checks in to the scorers table for Maccabi at the same time Jared Jordan is getting instructions for Isiah. They stand like 15 feet apart and face each other. We start yelling "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" They never fight.

Last thing: the sexual harassment jokes are OD, people.

Well that was long, and boring, but I hope you enjoyed it, because I most certainly fuckin did.