Maccabi Tel Aviv B.C.
Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club, known for sponsorship reasons as Maccabi Rapyd Tel Aviv, is a professional basketball club based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The team plays in the Israeli Premier League and internationally in the EuroLeague. Maccabi Tel Aviv is known as one of the best teams in Europe, having won 6 Euroleague titles since joining, and having sent numerous players to the NBA draft.
The club was established in the mid-1930s, as part of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Sports Club, which had been founded in 1906.
With 6 EuroLeague championships, one Adriatic League championship, 57 Israeli Basketball Premier League championships, 46 Israeli State Cup titles, and 11 Israeli League Cup titles, Maccabi has been the most successful basketball team in Israel. Players such as Tal Brody, Miki Berkovich, Jim Boatwright, Kevin Magee, Earl Williams, and Aulcie Perry; and more recently Derrick Sharp, Šarūnas Jasikevičius, Tal Burstein, Anthony Parker and Nikola Vujčić, have been among the elite of Europe's basketball players.
History
The Israeli Basketball Super League started in 1954, and Maccabi Tel Aviv was the first champion. It has dominated the championship ever since, winning the title overal 57 times, including 23 consecutive titles. The team has also won the Israeli Basketball State Cup overall 45 times. Maccabi is considered Israel's national sporting representative in the world.From 1969 until 2008, Maccabi Tel Aviv was sponsored by Elite, Israel's largest food company, and carried its name. Since July 2008, Maccabi has had a new sponsor – Electra. In 2015 they switched their sponsor once again, this time to fashion chain FOX.
Since 1963, the club's home court has been the Yad Eliyahu Arena in Tel Aviv. Originally an open-air court for 5,000 spectators, it is now a modern indoor arena with a capacity of 10,383.
Most Maccabi Tel Aviv head coaches have been former players of the club. Yehoshua Rozin was involved with the club for 40 years. Ralph Klein started as an 18-year-old player and later had several spells as a coach, and led the club to its first EuroLeague title in the 1977–78 season. Zvi Sherf played for Maccabi's second team, and coached the team for three spells. Pini Gershon played in the Youth department and as a coach led Maccabi to three EuroLeague titles; in 2001, 2004, and 2005.
Maccabi Tel Aviv has always provided the senior Israel national basketball team with a large number of players. Five Maccabi players, headed by Avraham Shneur, were on the team that represented Israel in its first EuroBasket, in 1953 in Moscow.
Tanhum Cohen-Mintz was one of Europe's top centers in the sixties, and was selected to the first FIBA European Selection European All-Star Team, which played in Madrid in 1964. Miki Berkowitz, Motty Aroesti, Lou Silver, and Eric Minkin played a major part in winning the silver medal at the 1979 EuroBasket in Torino. Doron Jamchy played 16 years for the Israel national team, and holds the record for appearances and points scored.
Maccabi Tel Aviv was the first Israeli club to enter the FIBA European Champions Cup, in the 1958 season. Since then, it has played over 600 games in European-wide competitions, and was the only Israeli club to play in a FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup Final, and to win the European-wide top-tier level EuroLeague on six occasions. Maccabi has played in 15 EuroLeague Finals. In 1994 Tel Aviv, and in 2004 in Tel Aviv, Maccabi organized the EuroLeague Final Four.
The first basketball game between an NBA and a FIBA team was held in 1978, in Tel Aviv. Maccabi Tel Aviv beat the defending NBA champion Washington Bullets, 98–97.
Maccabi Tel Aviv has played a record 18 times vs. NBA teams, and became the first European team to win on an NBA floor, when it beat the Toronto Raptors, 105–103, in 2005. It also beat the Phoenix Suns and Brooklyn Nets in 1984, to win a tournament in Tel Aviv.
Through the decades
1950s
5 Israeli League championships, 3 Israeli Cups.Early success in the Israeli League. Rivalry with Hapoel Tel Aviv begins.
1960s
5 Israeli League championships, 5 Israeli Cups.Establishment as an elite club with FIBA European All-Stars, such as center Tanhum Cohen-Mintz. Fierce rivalry with home-town foes, Hapoel Tel Aviv.
Tal Brody came to Israel in 1966 from the United States, after having been drafted #12 in the 1965 National Basketball Association Draft, originally just to take one year out of his life to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv. Ralph Klein, Israel's most successful coach at the time, said that up until the enthusiastic Brody's arrival, Israelis had only viewed basketball as a fun game. But within a year, with his serious attitude and his inspirational commitment, Brody had inculcated his teammates with his view of basketball as a way of life. At his urging, the team doubled the number of practices it held every week.
To capitalize on Brody's quickness and speed, the coach abandoned the team's formerly slow pace, in favor of a fast-paced motion game, built around fast breaks. Brody was the most dominant player in the European-wide second tier level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup in the 1966–67 season. In 1967, he was named Israel's Sportsman of the Year. The team made it through the first, second, and third rounds of the European Cup Winners' Cup's playoffs, and reached the Finals, finishing second in the league.
For the first time, the Israeli Prime Minister, the Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, and Knesset members came to games. Demand for tickets to games in the team's 5,000-seat stadium was so high that they became exceedingly difficult to obtain.
1970s
1 FIBA European Champions Cup, 10 Israeli League championships, 8 Israeli Cups.The rise to the top in Europe. The first EuroLeague championship in 1977 was soon followed by another finals appearance in 1980. Tal Brody was the captain of that Maccabi Tel Aviv team.
1977 FIBA European Champions Cup: "We are on the map!"
The year 1977 was the apex of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was boycotting Israel. In the first round of the FIBA European Champions Cup Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Real Madrid, 94–85. In the second round, it beat BC Brno, Czechoslovak League, for the first time, 91–76, on 15 February 1977.In the FIBA European Champions Cup semifinals, Maccabi Tel Aviv was matched against CSKA Moscow – the Red Army team. CSKA Moscow was a powerhouse. The Soviet Army team had won the prior USSR League championship. Six of its players had played on the Soviet national team that had defeated the United States in the 1972 Summer Olympics, and their captain was Sergei Belov. And the Communists were well known for using sports to glorify what they billed as their supremacy over the West.
The Soviet Union had broken off diplomatic relations with Israel a decade earlier, and politically and militarily backed Israel's Arab enemies. For political reasons, therefore, CSKA Moscow refused to play in Tel Aviv. And the Soviets also refused to grant visas to the Israelis, to allow them to come play in Moscow. In the end, Maccabi Tel Aviv's "home game" was played in the small, neutral town of Virton, Belgium.
The game took place in an emotional atmosphere. It was of huge symbolic value for Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, and for many Israelis who ordinarily had no interest in basketball. The game pitted the capitalist West against the Communist East, and Israel against the country that was supplying its enemies with weapons. The game also matched the country of Israel, with a total of a mere 4 million inhabitants, against the Soviets, with their 290 million people. The newspaper Maariv billed the 17 February 1977, game as "the fight between David and Goliath." Most of Israel's population watched the game, which was broadcast on Israel's only TV channel at the time.
Maccabi Tel Aviv upset the heavily favored Soviets, 91–79. The feeling among Israelis was not only that CSKA Moscow had been defeated, but that a victory – albeit small – had been achieved against the mighty Soviet Union. The game has for decades been recognized as a key event in the forging of Israel's national identity. Even decades later, it was being replayed repeatedly on Israeli television.
"We are on the map!" proclaimed a euphoric Tal Brody, in his heavily American-accented Hebrew, as a TV announcer pushed a microphone in front of him for a post-game quote, while people danced the hora around, him in excitement and celebration. "And we are staying on the map – not only in sports, but in everything." The phrase "We are on the map!", a literal translation of an English phrase into his adopted language, but a novel saying in Hebrew, became a new, popular phrase in Israel. It reflected a physical victory by the nascent Jewish Zionist idea, and national pride. It became Israel's most famous quote, and a staple of Israeli speech.
Back home, hundreds of thousands of Israelis celebrated spontaneously in the streets, and 150,000 in Tel Aviv congregated in celebration in what is now Rabin Square. Many jumped into its fountain, splashing in water and champagne. Recalling the moment, an Israeli quoted in the book From Beirut to Jerusalem told author Thomas Friedman that on one level it was Brody the star basketball player and his teammates beating the Russians, but on another level it was "my grandfather beating them. It was our retroactive victory over the Cossacks."
The FIBA European Champions Cup Finals were played in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on 7 April 1977. Yugoslavia was a Non-Aligned country that supported Palestine, and with which Israel did not have diplomatic relations, and the El Al plane that brought the Maccabi Tel Aviv players over to it for the game, was the first Israeli plane ever allowed to land there.
The Israelis were pitted against the highly favored Mobilgirgi Varese, the champions of Italy's top league. Mobilgirgi Varese had beaten the Israelis twice that year, and had beaten them in the European-wide second-tier level FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup Finals, ten years earlier, when Brody first started playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv. Back in Israel, the entire country watched the game on television.
Maccabi Tel Aviv went on to defeat Mobilgirgi Varese by one point, 78–77, in the FIBA European Champions Cup Finals. Brody, as the team's captain, received the FIBA European Cup trophy from FIBA's Secretary General, and lifted it over his head. Jim Boatwright was the game's leading scorer, with 26 points.
It was Israel's first FIBA European Champions Cup title, in the 23-nation league. It was also the first time that Israel had won a championship of that caliber in any sport, and was, at the time, Israel's greatest achievement in international sports. The victory greatly lifted the spirit and morale of the country. In Israel, 200,000 people gathered to celebrate in Israel's National Park, and the event was celebrated as a national holiday. When the team returned home, it found 150,000 Israelis waiting for it.