Scotty Wilbkin returned to the hall and was received like a rock star, as if he had not left eight months ago. He did the usual route that he has done hundreds of times, this time as a guest, went up to warm up and seemed quite shocked by the reception. The Maccabi Tel Aviv fans who missed him didn’t let him breathe, little by little he started to realize that it was going to be an emotional evening for him.
“It was very strange, I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel,” Wilbkin said. “It was beautiful, I felt the love, but it was also strange to receive the attention and the love and then go up to play.”
His opening was very bad. In the first period, he grabbed a shot from Josh Niebo and in the next period he missed a free three-pointer, only for a few seconds later Lorenzo Brown, his replacement at Maccabi Tel Aviv, to hit a three-pointer of his own. You can pave the way further.
Going down to the dressing room after the loss, when the pulse calmed down, Wilvkin found time to joke in the ears of Shimon Mizrahi (“I missed all the shots for you”, he told him jokingly). No matter what, wins or losses, in the end the legacy of an athlete is the way to enter the hearts of the fans.