Members of the University of Arizona’s basketball team lead a clinic in Jerusalem, Aug. 13, 2023. Photo: Josh Hasten.
Temperatures were scorching outside in Jerusalem on Sunday—and the competition was heating up indoors at a local gym as well, with some of the top college basketball players in the United States, representing the University of Arizona, leading young Israeli hoopsters in a clinic of drills and games.
Enes Kanter Freedom walks to the Western Wall in Israel, there to help train kids at a youth basketball camp in Israel, August 2022. Photo by Josh Hasten. Credit: Bnai Zion.
“If you could change anything in this world, what would it be?” asked NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, while seated among 30 Jewish, Christian and Muslim, children during a break in the action at a youth basketball camp he was helping to run this week at the YMCA in Jerusalem.
NBA Hall of Famer, two-time world champion and team USA Olympic gold medalist Ray Allen conducts a training session for kids at the YMCA in Jerusalem, on May 15, 2022. Credit: Gali Tibbon/America’s Voices in Israel.
NBA Hall of Famer Ray Allen wrapped up a whirlwind tour of Israel this week, taking time to speak with members of the press before heading back to the United States.
Maccabi Ma’ale Adumim basketball team, June 2021. Credit: Courtesy.
For the first time in Israeli professional basketball history, a team from over the so-called “Green Line” has secured a spot in Israel’s second-highest tier league—known as Liga Leumit, or the National League—by finishing the “tier three” league standings as No. 1.