As our fellow writer Yarone Arbel writes for euroleague.net, Marcus Fizer might be out for the season.
Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv suffered a blow over the weekend as it learned that the injury big man Marcus Fizer suffered in Thursday’s road win at Olympiacos Piraeus has likely ended his season. During the first quarter of the game, Fizer was fouled on his way to the basket and landed badly on his right leg. He did not return to the game. After returning to Tel Aviv, an MRI revealed that Fizer sustained an internal and external tear of the meniscus in his right knee. Fizer will go under surgery this week and will miss the rest of the Top 16. His return to the courts depends on the results of the operation, but it’s likely that Fizer won’t be able to play again this season at all. Fizer’s injury comes on the heels of All-Euroleague center Nikola Vujcic getting hurt the day before that game, though he is expected to return only in 10 days. Maccabi may not add a player to its Euroleague roster in Fizer’s place because the deadline for new registrations passed last Tuesday.
“Obviously, this isn’t good news for us,” head coach Zvika Sherf said after hearing the updates regarding Fizer’s injury. “We’ll be smarter on Tuesday when we’ll know more accurately for how long he’ll be sidelined. Anyhow we’ll have to play well without him in the upcoming month at least. On Thursday night we proved we can win in tough gyms against big teams without Fizer and Vujcic, but obviously everybody will have to give more of themselves.”
Does anybody give Maccabi now a chance? Maybe after you know about their performance without Fizer and Vujcic in a domestic league game against Hapoel Jersualem, which was also attended by Yarone Arbel:
Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv showed its pride Sunday night with a big 85-101 road win over Hapoel Migdal Jerusalem. Maccabi showed up without the injured Nikola Vujcic and Marcus Fizer, while Hapoel missed Timmy Bowers who’s in the USA for personal reasons. However while the champs found a wide cover for the missing big guys in a must-see performance by Terence Morris and a big second half from Lior Eliyahu, the cup holder couldn’t find someone to fill in for its missing guard. Maccabi dominated the boards in the first half and out-rebound Hapoel 39-49.
“Dominating the boards without Fizer and Vujcic” – we will see Thursday how much this is worth against Zalgiris…
