Tonight: It's Playoff time!

The last quarter-final series of the 2023 playoffs will begin this evening (Thursday) at Pais Arena, when Hapoel "Bank Yahav" Jerusalem, four days after the painful loss in the final of the Champions League to Telekom Bonn, will host Bnei Herzliya, who dreams of another run like in the playoffs Last year (21:00, live broadcast on the SPORT5 channel, refs: Sefi Shemesh, Nir Mayerson, Harel Kidron). 

For the host, Brandon Brown and Sim-Sander and Vene were not registered, for the guest C.J. Albee and Andy Van Vliet. In addition, they will miss Sandy Cohen, who underwent chest surgery and will not play again this season.

At the beginning with the 89/90 season, there were 110 best-of-five series in the top playoffs in Israel: 47 of the series ended in a 0:3 sweep (Maccabi Tel Aviv is responsible for 31 of the sweeps), 42 of the series ended in a 3:1 result, and 21 of the series reached a decisive fifth game .

In 85 of the best-of-5 series to date, the team with the home advantage won (77.3%), compared to 25 victories of the team without the home advantage (22.7%). Last season, all quarterfinal (best of 5) series ended with the team with the home advantage winning, but in the semifinal and final (best of 3) series, the lower seed won.

In 90 of the best-of-5 series, the team that won the first game won the entire series (81.8%). Only in 20 of the series did the team that fell behind 1:0 (18.2%) win the series. In the last two seasons in which best-of-5 series were held in the quarterfinals, only one team managed to win the series after being defeated in the opening game: Hapoel Jerusalem last year against Hapoel Gilboa Galil. In the 2018 playoff quarterfinals, there were two comebacks from a 1:0 deficit: Hapoel Jerusalem again against Gilboa Galil and Hapoel Tel Aviv against Maccabi Ashdod.

Only three times in history did a team from 7th place eliminate a team from 2nd place in the quarterfinals of the playoffs: Hapoel Haifa in the 86/87 season against Hapoel Holon (0:2), Maccabi Ashdod in the 11/12 season against Gilboa/Galil (1:3) and Maccabi Rashel before Six years against Hapoel Eilat (2:3). The 21/22 season ended with 65% success for the home teams in the regular season - the highest percentage in 26 years. However, in the playoffs, the balance of the home teams was only 13:9 (41%).

Last season, for the second time in history and the first since 2017, the two leaders of the league at the end of the regular season did not reach the final, which brought together the third-ranked Bnei Herzliya with the fourth-ranked Hapoel Holon. The purple-yellow became the champions with the second lowest ranking in the regular league, after Maccabi Rashel who did it from sixth place in 2016. Apart from them, only two other teams that were not ranked 1-2 in the regular season lifted the title: Hapoel Gilboa/Galil in 2010 and Hapoel Jerusalem in 2017, both from third place.