It has taken almost a decade but Maccabi Tel Aviv is once again the Euroleague champion, after winning the continent’s premier basketball tournament. Tel Aviv took the title with a 98-86 overtime victory over the heavily-fancied Real Madrid in Milan.

Tel Aviv wasn’t supposed to have a chance against Real Madrid either, but no team could overcome the unflappable character of David Blatt’s men, with Maccabi erasing an 11-point deficit on Sunday before securing the win in overtime in front of over 9,000 yellow-and-blue fans who dominated the arena. “I’m so happy,” said Blatt, who won his first Euroleague title as a head coach. “We have brought so much honor to the country and to Maccabi fans especially. We never wavered and I’m just so proud of everyone.”

Among the first to congratulate Coach Blatt and his team were Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres told Blatt he almost had a heart attack watching the game.

“You are heroes and have brought incredible pride to the state of Israel,” said the president during the phone call, adding “all of Israel is yellow tonight.”

The fact that Maccabi made it to the final four was already the talk of the town after a relatively disappointing season including a series of unusual domestic defeats. Having unexpectedly defeated CSKA Moscow with a basket in the last second of Friday’s semifinal, no one gave Tel Aviv more than a glimmer of hope against Madrid. In the earlier league section of the competition Tel Aviv lost twice to both the Russians and Spanish. Some 10,000 Israelis were in Milan to see Tel Aviv pick up its sixth European crown. [Photo: Euroleague]