Maccabi's Fischer out of Top 16
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 The second-ranked Euroleague player of the entire season, center D'or Fischer of Maccabi Electra, will miss the rest of the Top 16 after being attacked outside a Tel Aviv nightspot early Monday and rushed into emergency surgery to repair a severe facial cut. Following Maccabi's victory on Sunday night in Israeli League play, Fischer went out to a club where he was later attacked with a broken glass bottle. Doctors in Tel Aviv performed micro-surgery until midday Monday to repair the damage. "D'or arrived in the early morning with a big and very deep cut on his cheek. He couldn't close his eye or smile easily," Dr. Eyal Gur, head of plastic surgery at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, stated in a joint press conference with Maccabi Electra. "We performed a micro-surgical process to repair the damage. He will be released from hospital in two to three days and should be able to play again in two to three weeks. It will take between three and six months, if at all, until normal function returns. We have to wait until the healthy nerve grows. We hope he'll be able to smile and shut his eye as before." Fischer, 27, is from the United States. He is in his first season with Maccabi. He was trying to become the first Euroleague player all decade to lead the competition in average performance index rating at the end of his debut season. Fischer currently ranks second among all Euroleague players this season in performance rating at 21.2 per game based on his averages of 14.6 points (eighth), 7.6 rebounds (third) and 1.7 blocks (fifth) over 13 games. Maccabi players arrived to visit Fischer in the hospital before and after the team's practices on Monday. Maccabi still holds a small chance of qualifying for the Quarterfinal Playoffs going into a road game Thursday at Alba Berlin, but now will have to cope with the challenge without the team's best performer so far this season.
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Yarone Arbel, Tel Aviv
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