Alley-Oop to Aliyah by David Goldstein

Author:David Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

9

THE ISRAELI YANKEES

IN SPORTS, FEW CLICHÉS GET as much mileage as the parable of David and Goliath. When the coach of an underdog needs to make an inspiring pregame speech or a journalist wants an instantly relatable headline, the biblical tale of an undersized child warrior’s victory over a seemingly undefeatable behemoth is an obvious choice. Most teams in sports can easily be classified as either David or Goliath. In Israel though, a land of so many contradictions, there is one team that can be classified as both. Even, sometimes, within the same week.

The names of many Israeli basketball teams start with the word Maccabi, followed by the name of the team’s city or town (Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Rishon LeZion, and Maccabi Ashdod are a few that come to mind). Maccabi Tel Aviv, however, is far and away the country’s most successful and well-known team, so much so that when “Maccabi” is used as a stand-alone term, it is implicitly understood that the reference is to Maccabi Tel Aviv. On Thursday nights Maccabi plays in the Euroleague, and Israelis eagerly support the plucky Israeli “David” as it battles the “Goliaths” of Europe. It has been this way since the 1970s, when the team, led by Aulcie Perry, Tal Brody, and other formidable players, defeated CSKA Moscow. Fans and pundits lauded it as a shared victory of four million Israelis over 200 million Soviets, a clear David-over-Goliath win. The club is so well supported in its battles with European powers that Israelis were asked to turn off any unnecessary electrical appliances before a big 1989 clash with CSKA because it was feared the whole country would have their televisions on and cause a national power outage!

Come Sunday, though, Maccabi plays its Israeli league games. Now it suddenly becomes the Goliath, dominating the local competition in an unprecedented (and critics would argue, unseemly) manner, in part because of a budget that often surpasses that of the rest of the league’s teams combined. In Israel, Maccabi is akin to baseball’s New York Yankees, the team that has claimed more than twice as many World Series championships as the next most successful organization, and, not coincidentally, the team with financing that often far outstrips most other teams. As African American Fred Campbell, a veteran of 25 seasons in Israel, put it, “There’s the league and then there’s Maccabi—everybody else is shooting for second place.”

Maccabi’s fans are among the most fervent in the world, with thousands of them regularly traveling to watch the team compete abroad, rocking foreign arenas with chants in support of Maccabi’s yellow and blue. The team’s influence stretches to North America as well, where Israeli expats religiously track the team’s exploits and celebrate current and former players alike. Anthony Parker summarized the passion of the Maccabi faithful with an anecdote from his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers, five years after he left the Israeli club to return to the NBA.

“It’s 2010, and I’m with Cleveland in Miami [to play the Heat],” Parker said.

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