Israel is known as the Holy Land and a place rich with history and culture, but what many people don’t know is that it is also home to high level basketball. Since 2000, Israel has been one of the biggest basketball hotbeds in Europe. Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israel’s top team, won Euroleague titles in 2001, 2004, and 2005, and reached the Euroleague title game in 2006 and 2008. They also produced NBA players Anthony Parker, Omri Casspi, Maceo Baston, and Sarunas Jasikevicius, and beat the Toronto Raptors in an exhibition game, 105-103, in 2005. Additionally, many NBA players including Jordan Farmar, Trevor Booker, J.J. Hickson, and Avery Bradley spent the lockout playing in Israel. I caught up with David Pick, a writer for Eurobasket.com covering the Euroleague and Israeli basketball, to talk about the lockout, the Israeli Super League, and LeBron James. Read More »

The trendy thing to do these days if you’re an NBA player is to publicly announce that you are thinking about playing overseas. All the cool kids are doing it. Dwight Howard said he was thinking of jumping to Europe or China and Kobe Bryant was reportedly nearing a deal with Turkey’s Besiktas basketball club – the same team that recently signed Deron Williams. And why not? Playing overseas seems like a pretty sweet gig: you get to hang in some awesome foreign country for a couple months while playing against solid competition.

But that’s only if you pick the right league. Pick wrong and you could end up freezing your ass off on a bus in Siberia traveling from one empty gymnasium to another. That’s why we’re here to break down the five best leagues for NBA players looking to get some burn outside the U.S. Read More »

You know the only way a preseason game between the Knicks and a team that isn’t even in the NBA would crack the sports highlights shows on an NFL and baseball playoffs Sunday is if something crazy happened. And in the third quarter of New York’s game against Maccabi Tel Aviv (Israel), things got appropriately insane. After Maccabi head coach Pini Gershon got himself ejected thanks to a couple of techs, he refused to leave the court — if you saw the Season 2 premier of “Tool Academy,” he pretty much acted like the dude who got kicked off that first week. The refs wouldn’t re-start the game until Gershon left, so it turned into a standoff. Read More »

Although the Sixers just signed their first round draft pick Jrue Holiday, they are still in desperate need of a PG. While there is a slight chance that Andre Miller returns for a much reduced price, it’s more likely that they’ll try and pick someone else up. And right now that someone could be Carlos Arroyo. Read More »