I’m not supposed to have favorites, but I think this episode is going to be one of my favorites. And I don’t usually remember what I did on specific dates. Like, if you were alive, do you remember where you were on March 3, 2004? Or December 15, 2023? I absolutely do not.
But there are some dates that just stick. And they’re the really important dates.
- March 29, 1995: that’s when Michael Jordan had the double nickel game.
- Jan 22, 2006: that’s the day Kobe dropped 81, 81!
- April 2, 2023: that’s when Caitlin Clark scored 41 points in the Final Four against South Carolina.
- Sunday, February 2nd, 2025:what happened? Okay, you know this now, that’s the day of the Luca trade, which was monumental for the NBA… which, by the way, I found out from my sister, who dropped this knowledge on the rest of us siblings at 4:38 am, because she has the right priorities. (We’re a sports family, what can I say?)
So when I tell you that I remember May 1, 2004 with singular clarity, you can safely assume that’s not because it was some major historical event, though maybe it was, it’s also because a very big game happened on that day.
But it wasn’t just any big game. It was basketball history in the making, as Maccabi Tel Aviv faced off against Skipper Bologna, which is not a brand of lunch meat but the legendary Italian basketball team.
And I remember every second of it. I spent most of the night at a Jerusalem restaurant called New Deli. That’s D-E-L-I, as in, meat, not D-E-L-H-I, as in India. For kids like me, Anglo kids in the aughts in their post-high-school-year in Israel, New Deli was one of those iconic Jerusalem hangouts. It was exactly what you might expect: a mix of Anglo accents; huge TVs everywhere; and massive, meaty sandwiches, processed beyond recognition and absolutely drowning in sauce. And I’m a real sauce guy. Garlic mayo, chimichurri, spicy mayo. Actually anything orange. If you give me an orange sauce, I will literally dip anything into it. And yes, Larry Gil, I said literally even though I meant figuratively. Try me. And when I said literally, I meant figuratively, but I said literally. Hope that’s ok.
Sorry, got distracted by the sauces, that happens sometimes. Where was I? Right, New Deli, May 1, 2004. Which, like the rest of the country, was in an absolute uproar.
And again, I like sports. I like sports. Presumably anyone who posts up to watch the game is a “sports guy.” But that doesn’t explain the pandemonium that erupted in New Deli as Maccabi Tel Aviv sank basket after basket, muscling the Italians out of the way. And hold on to the word muscling for the end of this episode.
Because this wasn’t just any springtime in the early 2000s. And this wasn’t just any country spellbound by its national team.
This was the spring of 2004. And while I was enjoying the heck out of my gap year in Israel, it wasn’t an easy time to be there. The country was in the thick of the Second Intifada – the violent Palestinian uprising that claimed more than 5,000 lives.
By now, suicide bombings were no longer breaking news. At least 36 Israelis had been killed by suicide bombs so far that year. By the end of 2004, that number would rise to 86, as terrorists boarded buses or entered restaurants or lingered by a shipping port with the express purpose of murdering as many Israelis as they could and having the intention of doing so.
So no, it wasn’t just a game. It was a moment of respite. An oasis of normalcy in a country where buses exploded regularly. And it was going very, very well.
This wasn’t Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first rodeo, not by a long shot. The “Pride of Israel,” as they were called, had racked up three previous Euroleague championships – in 77, 81, and 2001.
But somehow this felt different. For a few heady weeks in the spring of 2004, Israelis forgot their problems and their grief and their fears.
Names like Derek Sharp, David Bluthental, Sarunas Jackivicus, Tal Burstein, Nikola Vujčić and the great Anthony Parker were on everyone’s lips.
I’m not much for predictions – if history has taught me anything, it’s to expect the unexpected – but I’m gonna make a prediction right now. I bet that 100 years from now, when my cyborg great-grandkids are effortlessly absorbing history lessons through the AI chips implanted in their brains, they’re gonna hear a lot about suicide bombings and uprisings and humans’ general inability to be good to one another.
But I don’t want to teach history that way, darn it. Yes, the Second Intifada happened.
Yes, 2001 – 2005 really were difficult for Israelis and Palestinians.
But not even exploding buses can repress humans’ inner light.
Amid the horror, life went on. People got married. Artists made art. Anglo teenagers showed up at New Delhi to watch Israel dominate on the basketball court.
And that, to me, is just as much a part of the Second Intifada as all the bad stuff. Israelis and Palestinians both are more so much more than conflict. They’re real people, with sometimes chaotic and sometimes mundane and sometimes dizzyingly joyful lives.
And that joy was on full display in New Deli on May 1, 2004.
This was why the Zionist movement had worked so hard to build a Jewish state.
Really? I’m going with that? The success of the Zionist movement can be boiled down to a basketball game?
Honestly? Yes. Here’s why.
The story of Israel cannot, and should not, be reduced to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is about so much more.
And I’ll explain.
—
When you think of Israel or Israelis, what do you picture? My guess, and I could be wrong, is that you probably don’t picture basketball. Heck, you probably don’t picture height. Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian intellectual I find myself regularly coming back to, once recounted that when he first met Israelis, he was deeply confused. He’d grown up on stories of their might and power and ruthlessness, their prowess on the battlefield, their willingness to fight. He expected a nation of strong, swarthy Hulk-types… and was utterly confused to learn that most Israelis aren’t rocking a six-pack, an Uzi, and a mustache. Far from it. Instead, most Israelis look like… accountants. At least, if accountants didn’t own a single suit and dressed instead in cargo shorts and those teva sandals, which you know, you can have your debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but those Teva sandals, we can all agree they have to go. Yeah. I said that, I threw shade.
And look, I hate falling prey to stereotypes, but this one isn’t exactly without merit. Jews are famous for their intellectual achievements and lactose intolerance, not typically their natural athleticism.
So how did a team of Davids reach the pinnacle of a game geared for Goliaths?
And WHY was a country in Southwest Asia competing in the Euroleague?
If you’re at all familiar with Israel’s neighbors, you may already know the answer to the second question. The Jewish state plays soccer/futbol and basketball in European leagues for the simple reason that many Middle Eastern countries refuse to compete against them. In fact, here’s a nerd corner alert for you (we should make t-shirts): in 1958, the Israeli soccer team qualified for the World Cup without playing a single game, because no other country in the Asian and African Leagues agreed to play against them. (And this was 1958, friends. ’67 had not happened yet. There was no military occupation. No checkpoints or walls. Just some old-fashioned antisemi – I mean, anti-Zionism.) Welcome to BDS before BDS.
So instead of playing against their neighbors, Israel played against European teams. And they ruled.
Are you surprised to hear that? Well, it’s true.
Cause this isn’t one of those underdog stories, like Cool Runnings or Remember the Titans or the Six Day War – though I freaking love all of those stories.
The Israeli teams were good.
Really good.
A well-oiled machine working together like clockwork, rolling over opponents for fun.
But their breakthrough didn’t happen overnight. The story of Israel’s love affair with basketball begins before Israel itself: in 1920s Mandate Palestine, where a handful of Jews played a niche game called basketball on uneven outdoor courts with improvised hoops and backboards.
By 1933, basketball was big-ish enough that the Jerusalem YMCA opened the region’s first indoor basketball court. Soon, Haifa and Tel Aviv started opening their own basketball clubs. Even the IDF got in on the trend, setting up makeshift courts on military bases so soldiers could play between – whatever it is that soldiers do. Target practice? Competitive pushups? Painting their faces with that gross green and black oil paint? Yeah, you can tell I never served. You can tell.
Love of the game accompanied these young soldiers even after they finished their mandatory army duty, and pretty soon, basketball leagues and community games were springing up all over Israel.
Including on the kibbutzim – the socialist agrarian collectives that we really need to talk about one day.
Kibbutzim are all about the collective over the individual. No wonder they embraced basketball, which is the ultimate team sport. Whether it’s setting up a perfect pass, helpside defense, or grabbing a clutch rebound, the game requires real coordination among players. Soon, outdoor courts in the kibbutz center became communal hubs where residents gathered for games and events.
Though most of Israel’s early immigrants were from Europe, Southwest Asia, and North Africa, a handful of idealistic Americans were also drawn to the new Jewish state. They helped spread the game, and by the mid-1950s, Israel had formed the brand-new and highly official Israel Basketball Association.
The IBA established the Basketball Super League, a national competition played at the highest level. Israeli basketball had become a professional sport – and second only to soccer in popularity.
Tel Aviv quickly became the epicenter of basketball in Israel. Imagine outdoor courts tucked between Bauhaus buildings or set against the backdrop of sandy beaches. You can hear the squeak of rubber soles on concrete mingling with cries of seagulls, and the thud of bouncing balls and shouts from players, all while the rich fragrance of freshly baked bourekas wafts from the neighborhood cafes. Note to self: get some bourekas when I’m done recording.
Players of all ages battled it out, while enthusiastic spectators leaned on fences or perched on nearby steps, drawn to the vibrant, chaotic energy.
But for all their fervor, few Israelis realized that their national basketball team was on the brink of something extraordinary.
For a tiny country, Israel had a baffling number of national teams: 12 in total. But the unquestioned king of them all was Maccabi Tel Aviv, aka “the yellows,” HaTzehubim, creatively named after their yellow jerseys.
By 1954, Maccabi Tel Aviv had already established itself as Israel’s reigning champion, racking their first Israeli Super League title and winning all 22 games against fellow Israeli teams. It would be the first of their 57 Israeli Basketball Premier League championships, including a run of 23 in a row between 1970 and 1992.
They were big fish in a very small pond. Actually, if you think about it, they were more like a Great White in a fishtank. Just to give you some context, the next best Israeli basketball team, Hapoel Tel Aviv, holds five titles, while Hapoel Jerusalem holds two. Again, Maccabi Tel Aviv, they’ve got fifty seven.
I’m going to stick my neck out here: I don’t think any team in history has dominated a national sport quite like this.
Unfortunately, the Yellows couldn’t replicate their early national success on the European scene. They began competing in the Euroleague in 1960 – but it wasn’t until 1968 that they made it past the first round of Europe’s top-tier tournament.
Maccabi built their early success on local talent. But again, the country is teensy weensy. They needed fresh blood. So in the mid-late 1960s, they began adding Jewish-American players to the team sheet, who raised the bar dramatically.
One man in particular stands out. He’s Israel’s Michael Jordan – 6’2”, quick, smart, and an excellent shooter and passer. He’s also the first Israeli sports figure to win the Israel Prize.
His name is Tal Brody. And he was one of the architects behind Israel’s incredible win that day in May 2004.
In 1965, Tal Brody had just graduated from University of Illinois, and the world was his oyster. At 22, he was ranked among the top 10 basketball players across the entire US. NBA teams jostled to sign him, but it was the Baltimore Bullets, now the Washington Wizards, who scooped him up. Brody moved into a bougie apartment in the city, ready for a glittering career in the NBA.
Then fate intervened.
Brody travelled to Israel to represent the US in the 1965 Maccabi Games, aka the “Jewish Olympics,” when Jewish athletes from all over the world come to Israel to duke it out against each other. It was the first time he’d been to Israel – and he was smitten.
Based on what he’d learned in Sunday school, he came to Israel expecting to find, as he so memorably put it, quote, “people riding on camels and living in tents.” (Misconceptions about Israel before visiting? Shocking). What he didn’t expect was a fast-growing modern country made up of Jews from around the world.
Tal Brody lit up the tournament, winning gold for the US team. From the stands, a famous figure was taking note: Moshe Dayan, Israel’s iconic eyepatched warrior-statesman, could recognize talent when he saw it. He asked Brody to stay in Israel. And when Moshe Dayan asks you for anything, you don’t say no. (Unless you’re an archaeologist trying to save precious artifacts from being pilfered for Dayan’s personal collection, but that’s a story for another time, and a bit of a deep cut. Sorry that you caught a stray, Dayan. Anyway.)
Judaism had been at best a peripheral presence in Brody’s life. But visiting Israel sparked something deep inside him. And so he turned down the NBA and joined Maccabi Tel Aviv instead.
Imagine giving up the freaking NBA to play for a tiny country with zero basketballing pedigree. A country that half the world demonizes and refuses to play against!
Actually, you don’t need to imagine it. You can hear all about it from Tal Brody himself. Because we had the privilege of sitting down with him as we researched this episode.
And here’s how he described his decision to defer his NBA career and spend a year in Israel instead. Cause that’s all he thought it would be, at first. One year.
“And the assistant coach brought me to the head of Maccabi Tel Aviv, the chairman, and he made a proposal. He said to me, well, look, you’re a Jewish athlete. We’re suffering, you know, from a very serious recession in the country. People aren’t smiling. Our basketball team never passed the first round of any European basketball championships. And If a guy like you would come, maybe you can take us to another level, to bring us to another place in Europe and put smiles on the people’s faces, you can make a change”.
So Tal decided to take up the challenge. He had no idea that he was about to change Israeli basketball forever.
From the moment he stepped off the plane, Tal Brody had serious main character energy. He was a great passer and even better shooter. He was frighteningly quick. But above all he had vision. On court, holding the ball, calmly looking around him, you could see the cogs of his brain whirring as he processed the geometry of the court, the space and angles and positioning, sizing up all the different options, crunching the data at a million bits per second. And then the move would explode into action, with the ball almost inevitably landing up in the basket.
Brody’s Israeli career began in 1966, when he propelled Maccabi Tel Aviv all the way to the finals of Europe’s second-tier championship. The FIBA Cup was not as prestigious as the Euroleague, but at the time, it was the gateway to Europe’s premier competition. (It’s no longer around, by the way.)
And look, this might have been a second-tier championship, and they may have come in second. But no one really expected an Israeli sporting team to get as far as it did. Getting to second place was a wild achievement.
I mean, Maccabi wasn’t exactly playing in state-of-the-art facilities.
“Well, of course, conditions and the facilities, let’s say for sport, were like night and day. In Illinois, we had a stadium, 16,618 a game. In Israel, we played outdoors in the rain, in sandstorms, within farms, the cold in Jerusalem. The conditions were not the same. Not the same”.
But in spring of 1967, subpar athletic facilities weren’t exactly a pressing problem for Israelis.
The only thing they could focus on was dread.
Because this was spring of 1967.
Egypt and Syria were rattling their sabers. The entire state was steeling itself for what looked like a war of annihilation.
The US State Department sent Tal Brody a telegram advising him to leave Israel. He ignored them. Instead, he drove to the Jordanian border to train the Israeli soldiers in athletic drills.
But by mid-June, the national dread had turned to a dizzy euphoria. (Obviously, see our episodes about the Six Day War for more on that.) Israelis reveled in their unlikely triumph. They packed the brand-new 10,000-seater Yad Eliyahu Arena to watch the basketball games that had become a national source of pride. Tickets were almost impossible to get – unless you were the Prime Minister, who started showing up in the stands. That’s right, the grandfatherly, Yiddish-speaking Levi Eshkol had become a basketball fan – or at least, he was conscious that Maccabi Tel Aviv had serious nation-building potential.
Under coach Ralph Klein, the team itself adapted their style of play, capitalizing on Brody’s speed of thought and movement to embrace a more fast-paced, high-intensity game. (By the way, you don’t hear the name Ralph enough. If your name is Ralph, shout out to you. Email me, Ralph. Let’s be friends.)
But somehow, when it came to the Euroleague, they couldn’t replicate their hometown success. It took them almost a decade to advance beyond the quarter-finals.
But when they did, the event came to be known as the “Miracle on Hardwood.”
After the break, we’ll talk all about it.
It’s 1977, and Israel is not doing well. The country is in the midst of a deep economic recession, and still reeling from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The early excitement about national sports has dampened somewhat, in the wake of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre of 11 Israeli athletes. You get a little wary of international competitions when your athletes are murdered on live TV in front of the entire world.
Perhaps most unfairly of all, Israel is internationally being seen as a “moral leper.” Two years before, the UN had adopted resolution 3379, which declared Zionism to be a form of racism. (And yes, we’ve got episodes on everything we just mentioned.)
So Maccabi’s slow climb in the Euroleague was a welcome distraction. For the first time ever, they finally progressed beyond the quarter-finals. But it seemed like the bus would stop there. And if it had, I might never have sat in New Deli that day in 2004, cheering like a maniac for a winning team.
Thankfully, the bus didn’t stop there.
And what happened next would change Israeli sports history forever.
The 1977 Euroleague semi-finals game promised to be a nail-biter.
Maccabi faced down the mighty CSKA Moscow, composed of the most elite players from 22 countries across the Soviet Union. This was the core of the Soviet team that had won gold at the Munich Olympics, defeating the previously invincible US. They’d taken home the Euroleague title four separate times.
And, to make matters even more interesting, they’d refused to play against an Israeli team for the past seven years.
Mature, huh?
Remember when I said that Israel was becoming a moral leper against the nations of the world? Well, the USSR had a lot to do with that. They were the sponsors of the UN Resolution that declared Zionism to be racist. Lowkey, it still tickles me pink (do people still say that? Did they ever?) that people don’t realize that their chants of “Zionism is racism” are recycled Soviet propaganda from the 70s. Like overly slim pants, it’s just not cool anymore.)
When the fateful game rolled around in 1977, the Soviets were still ticked off about Israel winning the Six Day War and utterly humiliating their Arab proxies – not to mention destroying billions of dollars worth of Soviet weaponry. And though the USSR was among the first to recognize the State of Israel in 1948, they’d long since severed all diplomatic ties with the country.
So everyone was surprised when CSKA Moscow finally agreed to play against an Israeli team, on one condition: the game had to be played in a neutral country. CSKA Moscow refused to compete on Israeli soil or issue Russian visas to the Israeli players so they could come to Moscow. So the Euroleague found an alternative: Belgium.
This particular semifinal carried immense symbolic weight. This wasn’t just basketball. This was a fight between a tiny, embattled nation and a global superpower that backed its enemies and refused to acknowledge its existence. On paper, Maccabi were under-resourced, outspent, and outmatched.
But they had some secret weapons.
The first was Tal Brody.
The second was Miki (Mickey – like the mouse) Berkovich, famous for his scoring ability and his tendency to win games in the final seconds.
The third was Aulcie Perry, a defensive lynchpin known for his rebounding, shot-blocking, and sheer physicality on court. Basically Draymond Green with less spiciness, a player who existed just to spoil the party for the opposing team.
Unlike Brody and Berkovich, Perry wasn’t Jewish. Well. Not yet.
In the mid-1970s, Israel relaxed its recruitment rules, hoping to attract more top international talent. Perry answered the call in 1976, becoming one of the first African-American players to play in Israel. At 6’10, he towered over the other players. Soon, his name was shorthand in Israel for “a tall person.” Let’s bring that back – I want people to tell me I’m such an Aulcie.
Like Tal Brody, Aulcie quickly fell in love with the Holy Land (who doesn’t?), and in 1978, he even converted to Judaism, taking the name Elisha Ben Avraham. But that’s a story for a different day. Because right now, it’s 1977, and Maccabi Tel Aviv was ready for whatever CSKA could throw at them.
Back home, Israelis were glued to the broadcast on what was then the country’s only TV channel. Inside the Belgian arena, the energy was electrifying. The team walked into the stadium to find the stands plastered in Israeli flags and a huge Israeli crowd singing “Am Yisrael Chai,” the Jewish people live.
Maccabi started strong, with Tal Brody orchestrating the offense and Aulcie Perry dominating the paint – the area around the hoop, for you non-sports people – against CSKA’s physical defenders. The Israeli supporters, who had come all the way to Belgium, were raucous.
It was this energy that Tal remembers.
“People weren’t allowed out of Russia at that time to go cheer for you know sport teams or whatnot, so out of 500, 498 were from Israel, raising Israeli flag, singing Israeli songs, haveinu shalom aleichem, Am Yisrael Hai, and the spirit was fantastic and, you know, and there only two KGB agents, I think, that were cheering for them”.
Ouch.
Maccabi built up an early lead and maintained it for the duration of the first half, leading 41–38 at halftime. In the second half, CSKA intensified their efforts, pushing their large offensive players forward to close the deficit. But Maccabi’s spirited defense hung on. As the seconds wound down, the crowd understood something big was about to happen.
The final score: Maccabi Tel Aviv 91, CSKA Moscow 79 .
The famous victory was captured in 2016 documentary On The Map, whose title was taken from Tal Brody’s post match interview where he uttered the instantly immortal words in broken American-accented Hebrew:
“We are on the map, and we are staying on the map – not just in sports, but in everything!”
Nearly 50 years later, and the sentiment feels truer than ever.
“At the end of the game, it just burst right out of me, out of all that antisemitism that was all the time we saw when we played in East Europe and around the world even at that period of time, but it’s even worse today, but it just burst out a minute because it was only 30 years after Israel was created. And it meant so much that for the country, the game was broadcast through satellite back to Israel. So it just came out that we are on the map. We are staying on the map, not only in sport, but in everything. And it turned out so because the Soviet Union broke apart. In other places in the world, things just disappeared. And in Israel, we’re still there and we’re still gonna be there”.
The “Miracle on Hardwood” reverberated throughout Israel and across the Jewish world. Natan Sharansky, the Soviet refusenik, who was arrested by the KGB the day after the victory, said that memories of the win gave him strength and courage throughout his nine years imprisoned in Soviet labor camps.
In Israel, the victory was more than a sporting triumph. For a brief, shining moment, the weight of geopolitical strife lifted, and the nation celebrated as one. More than 150,000 Israelis had crammed into what is now Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. When the Yellows clinched the win, the crowd went BONKERS.
The streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv thronged with jubilant crowds waving flags, singing, and chanting. Even the Prime Minister was feeling the love.
Yitzchak Rabin had literally (there it is again) been about to resign over a banking scandal, but he pushed off the announcement so it wouldn’t clash with coverage of the game. (This is what happens when a country has only one TV channel. Ah, the good old days.) Reportedly, after the game, he cried tears of joy – and then resigned. (Side note: “banking scandal” sounds really bad, but it was actually a pretty minor affair. Links in the show notes for more on that.)
The victory became a moment of collective catharsis and validation – a declaration of the Jewish state’s place in the world.
After that semi-final, the final felt almost like an afterthought. Maccabi were up against the heavily favoured Italian champions Mobilgirgi Varese who had played in the previous ten Euroleague finals in a row, winning five of them. (And no, I don’t know why these teams have such difficult names for people like me to say. (Yes, that might have been the most American thing I’ve said.)
Despite the Miracle on Hardwood, Maccabi Tel Aviv didn’t have much hope. The CSKA semifinal upset was considered a fluke. But again Brody, Berkovitz, Perry and the rest of the team were monumental. And again Maccabi delivered a major upset, and this time it was even more nail biting: The final score was 78-77!
And there was more glory to come.
Fresh from their Euroleague win, Maccabi invited the reigning NBA champions, the Washington Bullets (you know, who were the Baltimore Bullets, now Wizards, or the Zards as I call them), they were invited to Tel Aviv for an exhibition match. (For those paying close attention, this was the team that Tal Brody had turned down more than a decade before.) Such an invite was unheard of. A Euroleague team had never had the cheek to challenge a mighty NBA franchise – never mind the NBA champions.
The Bullets accepted, though they privately felt it was a waste of time. This was a piddling little Euroleague team, and they were the NBA. No doubt they thought they’d wipe the floor with Maccabi.
They were wrong.
On September 7, 1978, in front of 10,000 delirious fans, Maccabi Tel Aviv became the first Euroleague basketball team not just to play an NBA team, but to defeat them. Maccabi had become specialists in winning by the narrowest of margins, and here again they eked out a thrilling 98-97 victory.
And the Yellows kept racking up the wins, taking home their second Euroleague championships in 1981. It was official: Maccabi Tel Aviv was an international basketball powerhouse.
Still, despite dominating the Israeli league and reaching the Euro finals four times, they wouldn’t win another trophy until 2001 – this time, with the help of another MVP.
Maccabi had poached Anthony Parker from the NBA. You may know his sister, WNBA star Candaca Parker. In his first season with Maccabi, Parker powered the Yellows all the way to the 2001 European title, defeating the old enemy CSKA in the semis, and new rivals, Greek superclub (here we go ahead) Panathinaikos in the final.
It was precisely at this moment, in 2001, that Coach Pini Gershon looked around him and noticed that many of his key players were getting a bit…old. The team needed fresh blood. And so the coach – a fiery, no-nonsense legend in his own right – took the opportunity to rebuild, using the European trophy win as bait to lure some of the best players in world basketball.
By this time, Israeli basketball had further relaxed recruitment restrictions, allowing teams to recruit more non-Jewish players. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe was a particularly fertile hunting ground for top talent.
Like Sarunas Jasikevicius of Lithuania, a master passer, dribbler and shooter, who became the engine driving the team’s attack.
And Maceo Baston, another NBA recruit who glued the team together. His acrobatic leaps and impeccable timing made him a nightmare for opponents.
They joined existing superstars, like Derrick Sharp, Maccabi’s veteran clutch sharpshooter and a massive fan favourite.
There was also the young Tal Burstein, blessed with a preternaturally great basketball brain, and quickly developing into a great all-rounder.
And, of course, Anthony Parker – one of the most complete players Israeli basketball has ever seen. Like Tal Brody, he had real main character energy, that mysterious ability to bend the game to his will.
Coach Pini Gershon was the perfect person to herd these extravagant talents, fashioning them into a team that transcended the sum of its parts. His coaching philosophy could be summed up in one expression: don’t get in the way. He once described his job as making sure his team scored one more point than their opponents.
So as the 2003-2004 season rolled, Maccabi were primed for something special. Something that would eclipse even the 1977 Miracle on Hardwood.
But of course, at this time, most Israelis had something other than basketball on their minds. The Second Intifada changed everything. For five years, Israel’s streets were fraught with fear. Collective grief seeped into every aspect of life. As I sat in New Deli on that fateful day in 2004, internally I felt like I was doing something defiant. Who was gathering in public these days – especially for something as trivial as cheering on a basketball game?
I’ll tell you who. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people, who refused to stop living their lives, despite how terrible the world can sometimes be. In other words, Israelis. And this is one of the fascinating things about Israel. A siren can sound at any time, summoning you to your safe room. But when the all-clear sounds, Israelis are right back in the streets, buying coffee, smoking cigarettes, gossiping, playing – living. As though Iran didn’t just send intercontinental ballistic missiles over the Temple Mount.
“So we’re quite disciplined. The country got disciplined. But the world doesn’t take into consideration. For 20 years, the people living in the south of Israel were under rockets attack…I went to a basketball practice in the South and I saw the kids were running in the practice with cell phones in their pocket. And I says, well, hey, you’re not allowed to be in a basketball practice with your cell phone, put it on the side. He says, I can’t because if we have a rocket attack, my mom calls and if I don’t answer, you know, wouldn’t be the rocket that kills me, she would kill me. So they don’t consider the world the pressure and the mental ability, the resilience that the people in the South living that lived under all these years”.
It’s depressing how little has changed since 2004.
So when Maccabi Tel Aviv took the court, they weren’t just playing basketball. In bars and cafes and homes across the country, families and friends gathered together to watch the games, clinging to the sense of normalcy that sports provided. They forgot about the security concerns and the heartbreaking headlines, cheering their champion team all the way to sporting immortality.
Maccabi swept through the early stages, destroying opponents with speed and skill and strategic brilliance.
The movements were like silk. I remember the plays so well.
Jasikevicius, the mastermind, holding the ball like a conductor before an orchestra, his calm presence defying the chaos around him.
Derrick Sharp, cool as ice, faking his shot, sending his opponent flying past him, then an explosion of energy, slamming the ball through the hoop with both hands.
Maceo Baston soaring through the air to energize the team and the crowd.
Nikola Vujčić moving with feline grace and purpose, his eyes scanning the court for the perfect pass.
Parker‘s gorgeous perfect shooting form.
Pini Gershon gesticulating wildly with windmill arms, willing the team to glory.
The team’s telepathic understanding, its cunning and craft, its fluid, choreographed movements – at times it was almost balletic. At other times it was a demonstration of sheer force of will.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. They struggled a little in the round of 16, and needed a win in the last game to secure their passage. Luckily they had Derrick Sharp. Check this:
Inevitably Maccabi were drawn against the old foe, CSKA Moscow in the semifinals. It was a rematch of a game a few months earlier in the group stages. Maccabi had trounced CSKA Moscow 83-80. Now, CSKA was hungry for revenge…
Not just for that game, but for 1977 and all the many occasions Maccabi had put them to the sword since.
It was another thriller. The Russians led for most of the first half of the game. But at 44-46, Maccabi pulled level for the first time.
Then they snatched the lead five minutes later.
…and they never relinquished that lead.
Maccabi won, 93-85.
The team carried that energy all the way to the finals, crushing Italian champions Skipper Bologna 118-74, the margin a staggering 44 points. It was the eighth time they’d crossed the magical 100-point threshold that year. And it was the most points ever scored in a European final.
When the buzzer sounded, it wasn’t just the crowd in the arena that erupted – it was an entire country.
The joy was infectious. The streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem filled with celebration, scenes that hadn’t been seen since 1977. I remember the anxiety all day leading up to the game, but this was pure destruction. The Israeli team looked like they were possessed, that nobody would get in their way. With the dream-team still intact, Maccabi repeated the trick in 2005, cruising to the title in even more emphatic fashion. That season, the team averaged a ludicrous 92 points a game.
Later on that year, the Yellows achieved yet another milestone – beating an
NBA team for the first time in 21 years. Their 105-103 win against the Toronto Raptors was also the first time ever that a European team had beaten an NBA team on North American soil.
But the party had to end sometime. In 2006, chasing an unprecedented Euroleague three-peat, they fell agonizingly short in the finals. They went down 73–69 to – you guessed it – CSKA Moscow.
CSKA finally got their revenge – in the sweetest way possible. That loss had the air of finality to it. This was the end of an era.
The NBA vultures were hovering. Anthony Parker was scooped up by the Toronto Raptors, and became a quality player on a new team. Saras Jasikevičius had signed with the Indiana Pacers the previous season, and Maceo Baston followed him in 2006.
Nikola Vujčić moved to Greece, while Derrick Sharp’s scoring touch left him and he retired a few years later. Of the Maccabi stars, only Burstain stuck around for another rebuild, becoming one of the greatest Israeli basketball players of all time.
The band had broken up. A dynasty dissolved almost overnight. Maccabi have won only one Euroleague championship since – and that was more than a decade ago.
But the legacy lives on, in Israeli players like Omri Casspi and now Deni Avdija, who is, as of February 2025, one of the best basketball players on the Portland Trail Blazers.And who knows? Maybe one day, the Yellows will stage a comeback, and we’ll have something new to celebrate. But even if they don’t, their story is plenty inspiring – a reminder that even in the bleakest moments, there is still room for joy.
So that’s the story of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s amazing 2004 win, and here are your Five Fast Facts.
- Israeli basketball teams had humble beginnings, but by the 60s, Maccabi Tel Aviv was a regional powerhouse.
- In 1977, the team made history when they beat CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague finals. The victory was extra-sweet, because the Soviet powerhouse had refused to compete against Israel for years.
- The team’s incredible talent, like Tal Brody and Aulcie Perry, became national icons. To this day, Brody’s words “We are on the map, and we are staying on the map,” remain an iconic declaration of Israeli pride.
- But in Israel, basketball is more than just a game. Amidst violence and geopolitical upheaval, Maccabi’s victories offered the nation a rare moment of unity and relief.
- Maccabi hasn’t won a Euroleague title since 2005, though they did defeat an NBA team that year. 20 years later, the time is ripe for another comeback.
Those are your five fast facts, but here’s one enduring lesson as I see it.
I said at the beginning that the story of Maccabi TA is a story of Zionism. And it is. It really is. Not the Zionism I often talk about, “the belief the Jewish people have a right to live in their ancestral homeland,” yes, blah blah blah, all true and important.
But Zionism is so much more than that.
At the Second Zionist Conference on 28 August 1898 in Basel, Switzerland, Max Nordau, a disciple of Theodore Herzl, delivered a passionate speech on the topic of what was called “muscular Judaism.”
He explained:
Zionism breathes new life into Judaism. This much I am sure of. It does this morally by refreshing the ideals of the People, physically by the physical education of our offspring, who shall reestablish a bygone muscular Judaism.
Nordau was inspired by the second century revolutionary Shimon Bar Kochba, positing that once Jews quote, “connect with our oldest traditions, we’ll again be broad-chested, strong armed, bold-looking men.”
I said it myself earlier: when you think Jew, you don’t think basketball legend.
In fact, for centuries, many non-Jews saw us as a caricature of ourselves. Look at medieval European art, which depicts Jews as pale and hunched and demonic, both pathetic and grotesque. And though today’s stereotypes aren’t quite as insulting, they’re still pretty… unflattering. I mean, would you rather be associated with Woody Allen, or Brad Pitt?
And look, I can poke fun at the lactose-intolerance that plagues many of us and glasses and accounting skills and whatever because it’s fun. But I can also recognize that it’s just a silly, surface-level stereotype. Jews aren’t inherently bookish, or physically inferior. Jews have different ethnic backgrounds and cultures. We can make fun of silly stereotypes, even embrace or reclaim them if we want to. Seriously, you do you. But I speak as a Jewish person now. We have other options. None of us have to internalize this unhealthy idea that we’re somehow weaker than everyone else. Because it isn’t true.
And looking back on it, maybe that’s why 2004 was so important for me.
During the Second Intifada, every headline portrayed Israelis as either victims or oppressors. Either body parts on an exploded bus, or monsters in tanks. Israelis weren’t just people. Israelis were statistics and stereotypes.
Until that game on May 1, when the world saw another side of the Jewish state. Strong, self-confident, athletic, self-assured.
Winning – but without anyone dying.
Non-Jews could look at Israel’s victory and say, wow, look at that talent. And so could Jews. And once a Jewish person – or any person – has a healthy sense of self – well, his whole self-perception might change.
Mine did. And it keeps changing, growing, expanding.
When I watch highlights of Doron Sheffer playing at Uconn in the 90s or when I see a bonafide NBA starter like Deni Avdija, it changes my self perception. Gives me, my kids, Jewish people all over the world something to look up to. Something to remember.
The Jewish people are actors on the world stage, not just spectators. Zionism has turned the Jewish people from objects to subjects. From victims to masters of our own destiny. Free to choose anything for ourselves – whether it’s a career in athletics or… accounting.
Israel is so much more than just conflict. Zionism is so much more than just Jews returning home. Zionism is so much more than a rescue project. It’s the story of Jews returning to history as actors. As people with agency and power and choice – even amidst suicide bombings and stabbings and sadness and stress, and yes, conflict from all sides.
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this podcast, it’s this: please, don’t reduce the story of Israel to conflict and wars.
And there’s no better example of that to me than May 1, 2004: the day I dipped turkey pastrami sandwiches into spicy orange mayo sauce and danced in the streets, celebrating a victory that echoed across centuries.
Israel was on the map. Israel IS on the map. And that is the most empowering feeling I can imagine.