The last time an NBA team lost a preseason game to an international team was in 1998. Eager to get their names in the history books, though, the Raptors lost yesterday to Maccabi Tel Aviv by a score of 105-102.

And then there’s this from Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, who’s like a more depressed Herm Edwards…

“At some point, we’ve got to learn,” he said to the assembled media. “When that’s going to be, I don’t know.

“I got nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, but just try to get better. If it kills me, we’re going to try to get better. If I have to die trying, then that’s what’s going to happen. I’ll die in the gym.”

Are you happy, Rafael Araujo? Are you happy, Loren Woods? You’re going to kill your coach. The man is talking about giving his life to make it so that you don’t completely suck.

I think the Raptors should somehow work this into their marketing campaign, putting it on billboards and newspaper ads: “RAPTORS BASKETBALL 2006: WE JUST MIGHT KILL SAM MITCHELL.”

In defense of the Raps, however, Maccabi Tel Aviv is the best club team in Europe and likely played a lot harder than the NBA guys. One, because they wanted to win a lot more, and two, because, well… they’re NBA guys. They don’t bust their ass in the regular season, let alone the preseason.

And even with that, the Israeli team had to play their balls off to beat maybe the worst team in the NBA by a scant two points.

“This is history,” someone named Green said. “Everybody remembers the game Maccabi played and won against the Washington Bullets 20-something years ago. They are still talking about it. And I’m sure 20 years from now, they will still be talking about this one.”

You take your little victories where you can get them, I guess. It probably isn’t a whole lot of fun to live in Israel, so hey, if beating the Bullets and the Raptors puts a smile on the faces of people… hey, enjoy it. Remember it as fondly as the time you beat the Ehtiopians in a chicken-wing eating contest.

And the other thing that this makes clear is that the basketball talent in the United States is still, despite what you may have heard, head and shoulders above anywhere else in the world. Their best club team against our worst, and they win by two? And they’re even allowed to have American players. I’d suspect that if the Raptors do round into their likely-to-be-quite-sad midseason form and give it their best effort, that they could beat the Maccabi team without much of a problem.