Hapoel Jerusalem saw no less than six import players land in Israel on Sunday including their star and MVP, Jared Harper. The guard returned to Israel to rejoin Hapoel Jerusalem for the 2025/26 season after having seen his team get to the league finals last year but have them halted due to the war with Iran as no winner was declared. Obviously, the situation was not an easy one as the Reds and Maccabi Tel Aviv as the league had to end the season deadlocked at one game a piece with no winner being declared.

As Harper arrived, he was asked if he felt that his team deserved to be the champion, “No, I wanted to play the last game and with the situation going on we weren’t able to, it was a tough situation for everybody. In that situation it’s hard, you didn’t win the game and didn’t lose the game. If you win the game you feel like champions and if you lose the game you feel like you can improve on things for the next season were we to finish it. The good thing is that I leek how we finished the seems as a team. In the semifinals we were able to come back from being down 0-1 and again in the finals we were down 0-1 and we were able to win the second game, I feel it showed our resilience throughout the whole season.”

ג׳ארד הארפר מתקבל על ידי אוהדי הפועל ירושלים בנתב״ג!🔴 pic.twitter.com/gOg8ziN49P

— Sports Rabbi (@thesportsrabbi) August 17, 2025

The season ended with the series final series knotted up at 1-1 when the war with Iran began leading to the league coming to a halt and then eventually being cancelled, “I guess, it’s not up to me I feel like the first priority is for everybody to be safe and the team did a good job making sure everybody was safe and that we were able to get home.

Would it have been better to have two champs than no champs? “Maybe, because you play the whole playoffs and there is no champion declared as you got to the last game. Maybe there should be two champions but I also see how no one actually one so I see both sides.”

As for goals, the EuroCup is right up there explained the guard, “It’s definitely our goal and I think we had a solid year last year so just being to build off of how we finished the season and continue that, I think we have a great chance to win the EuroCup and it’s definitely a goal for the year as to what we want to do.”

Harper spoke about the new signings, “All the signings were great. We have good players who fit our system. I have been playing against Cassius Winston my entire life all the way through high school so I have a relationship with him from before. I played against him when he was with Bayern Munich and I was with Valencia. I think he is going to be a great addition. Anthony Lamb and I have the same agent and I played against him the G-League.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv loaded up on big time signings, but Harper believes that many teams brought in a number of quality newcomers to the league, “I think everyone is looking good including Holon who had some great signings as well as some other teams. I think it’s bigger than just a single team and it’s big for Israeli basketball as a lot of teams are getting better and want to compete with the different teams and different money being thrown around to different people. That will make it super competitive and I see that there will be five games in the semifinals and finals so it’s going to be an exciting year.”

Continuity from last season will play a factor as well Harper explained, “It means a lot as the most successful teams that I have been on build continuity like when i was at Auburn. The final four team there had been together for 3-4 years so being able to build off last year and having the same system is going to do us very good. We have a lot of good new additions with high IQ so they can pick up stuff fast.”