Partizan didn't need a 30-point superstar performance to put Maccabi Tel Aviv away. They needed the ball to move, the turnovers to disappear and their outside shooters to make Maccabi pay. Friday's 88–67 EuroLeague win in Belgrade delivered all three, lifting Partizan to 5–5 while leaving Maccabi at 2–8 after Round 10.
Ethan Thompson led Partizan with 16 points, hitting five of his nine attempts from three-point range. His 5-of-13 overall shooting line tells only part of the story: all five made field goals were threes, so every successful shot stretched Maccabi's defence. Partizan finished 14-of-33 from beyond the arc, compared with Maccabi's 5-of-23. That 27-point difference in three-point scoring was larger than the final margin. The game statistics underline how decisively the perimeter battle tilted towards the home side.
The playmaking numbers were just as telling. Partizan recorded 27 assists against only seven turnovers, while Maccabi managed 16 assists and 13 turnovers. Carlik Jones scored seven points on 2-of-9 shooting but handed out seven assists without a turnover in 24 minutes. That's a valuable contribution from a lead guard even when his own jumper isn't falling: Partizan got organised possessions rather than possessions lost to careless decisions.
Partizan led 28–23 after the first quarter and broke the game open with a 22–12 second period. A 50–35 half-time advantage became 72–52 at three-quarter time, leaving Maccabi chasing a sizeable deficit for the final ten minutes. The winners didn't have to manufacture a dramatic late surge. They'd already done the difficult work by making Maccabi defend multiple actions and keeping their own mistakes down.
Lamar Stevens supplied another dimension with 14 points, eight rebounds and three blocks. Robert Franks added 11 points, four rebounds and three assists, while Nikola Tanaskovic contributed 11 points and seven boards. It wasn't an offence built around one scorer carrying the load. Thompson provided the long-range punch, Jones supplied direction and the forwards gave Partizan enough inside activity to keep the defence honest. The individual boxscore shows the breadth of those contributions.
Maccabi's leading scorer was Daniel Theis with 11 points, a modest high for a team that never reached 24 points in any quarter. The visitors actually collected more rebounds, 34 to Partizan's 32, but that edge couldn't offset their poorer ball security and three-point shooting. The defeat was less about losing every physical contest than about failing to convert possessions into enough efficient scoring chances.
For Partizan, the result offers a useful blueprint. A team sitting at .500 doesn't have to rely on a single explosive scorer when it can share the ball and generate clean perimeter looks. For Maccabi, the 2–8 record makes the offensive problem increasingly urgent: 67 points and 13 turnovers aren't a workable combination against an opponent that moves the ball this efficiently. Friday's 21-point gap was built possession by possession, long before the final buzzer.
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