All in all this international window was an unmitigated disaster for Israel and a number of fronts. The country’s NBA players, including Portland Trail Blazers All-Star Deni Avdija as well as Brooklyn Nets property Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf were not released by the clubs to play for the blue-and-white while many players were injured, either legitimately or not and were not part of the squad that ended up being a very weak one. 

There was little desire for both the Israel Basketball Association and the players themselves to take the extra step and show up for the two games against Germany and Croatia as the chances of punching their ticket to the World Championship was already in doubt after having lost to both of those countries in the first window of games back in late 2025. Israel did win both its matchups against Cyprus but so did the other teams and with their record carrying over to the second stage of qualifying the chances to advance to the championship was slim. 

Unfortunately, both the players and IBBA treated this window as such and have for all intents and purposes made the team’s next six games in round two meaningless. With a record of 2-4 they are in last place in Group K and will play six games against the likes of Holland, Latvia and Poland, all of which are in front of Ariel Beit Halachmi’s team in the standings. With that in mind, when the international windows come up in August, November and then February, the bench boss will have a very difficult time having the players come and give their best. Anyone with a nagging injury or is not 100% won’t participate as their teams won’t release them for what are inconsequential contests. 

Sure the argument can be made that the best players need to show up for these games or else they won’t be able to take part in the next international competition which is the Eurobasket, but at the end of the day the IBBA will take the best players when they can get them and if it’s going to be for the next competition, then so be it. 

However, it shouldn’t be like that. The IBBA needed to make a strong stand before the first set of qualifiers even took place and held the players to their word from the get go in order to have the best squad as possible for each window of games. It’s clear that they did not do that and in essence let the head coach, Ariel Beit Halachmi hang out to dry. 

The Israel National Team is “Kodesh” Holy and it has to be treated as such. When the IBBA allowed things to get out of control and instead decided to make a federal case over Omer Mayer’s participation in the Under-20 European Championships and weren’t able to file the correct paperwork for Noam Yaacov to play in the game against Germany, they lost the plot. 

The IBBA chairman Amos Frishman as well as all of the other executives needed to rule with an iron fist and work as hard as they could to get the best players available to feature. They needed to battle the Trail Blazers to release Avdija and the Nets to allow Saraf and Wolf to play, instead they took the club’s responses lived with it. They needed to battle tooth and nail to have those players in tow for this past international window and the fact that they didn’t sent a very poor message of apathy. 

The answer still could have been no, but they needed to show all of the players and most importantly the fans that they care and they will go to every length to get the best team to show up and unfortunately they did not. 

The IBBA represents all of us, the fans, the journalists, the players and the Israeli basketball. It’s time that they show everyone that they really do.