Last night\u00a0was the first official sporting event that Israel Sports Radio.com attended! The game pitted the Israel National Team and Holland in a battle of two Israeli head coaches. One of my partners, Andy Gershman and I had\u00a0a great vantage point sitting on press row right underneath the basket. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The game was the first of 3 for the Israelis as a prep tournament for Eurobasket\u00a02011 qualifying. The other teams in the tournament, Belgium and Great Britain played in the early game. Each team plays each other one time in this 3 day exhibition at the National Team training grounds at Hadar Yosef\u00a0near the Ramat Gan National Team Stadium.<\/p>\n
Omri Casspi\u00a0of course was the big draw for Israel and it showed with a packed, packed, filled to the rafters (literally)\u00a0 1500 seat arena. A great crowd showed up to see Israel’s first NBA player and they greeted him with a deserving round of applause.<\/p>\n
The Dutch came out firing on all cylinders and their transition play caught the Israelis off guard and Holland went off to the races during the first quarter totally dominating play in the paint, on the wings and from outside.<\/p>\n
The game changed slightly when David Bluthenthal stepped on the court and his defense helped stem the tide and put Israel back into the picture.<\/p>\n
The second half was pretty much all Israel as Raviv Limonad, and Yuval\u00a0Naimi sparked the offense and the home team pulled away for a 96-82 victory.<\/p>\n
After the\u00a0match we went to our first official press conference where we heard from the aforementioned Limonad\u00a0discuss the keys to their victory, and we also heard from Arik\u00a0Sivek the Israel National Team coach discussing the various nuances of the game.<\/p>\n
I asked 2 questions\u00a0in English which got a few heads turned our way which was good too for the\u00a0other members of the press to see new faces in the crowd. Th questions\u00a0focused on the team being surprised by the aggressive play of the Dutch at the beginning\u00a0of the game seeing Francisco\u00a0Elson, most recently of the\u00a0Philadelphia 76ers absolutely dominate the opening minutes. The coach readily admitted that the team was not prepared for the tough play at the start and how they had to readjust their play and make sure they got themselves back into the game.<\/p>\n
The second question centered around the terrific crowd in attendance. The coach said that they had thought about playing the games in the 11,000 seat Nokia arena, but decided against it in order to make people want to get the “hot” ticket! I say brilliant thinking!<\/p>\n
All in all a great first day for Israel Sports Radio.com. We got to meet a bunch of terrific people including, David Bluthenthal\u00a0(Israel National Team & Maccabi\u00a0Tel Aviv), Chris Finch-coach of Great Britain, Ofer\u00a0Shalach-Sport\u00a05 colour man, Omer Benovitz-Sport 5 reporter, Sharon Cablio-One.co.il.<\/p>\n
And of course a BIG THANK YOU to Motti\u00a0Aksmit, head of media relations of the IBBA\u00a0& the Israel National team for making our first day terrific! Todah Rabah!<\/p>\n
Thoughts from the Pulpit<\/p>\n
1) Matt Garza pitched yet another no-hitter in MLB\u00a0last night for the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays. this was the 5th no-no of the\u00a0year (should have been 6) In 1990 & 91 there were 7, yes 7 no hitters in each year, pitched by some of the following, Nolan Ryan, Dave Stieb, Dennis Martinez,\u00a0Bret Saberhagen, Fernando Valenzuela & Randy Johnson. Now that’s a pretty neat list!w<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night\u00a0was the first official sporting event that Israel Sports Radio.com attended! The game pitted the Israel National Team and Holland in a battle of two Israeli head coaches. One of my partners, Andy Gershman and I had\u00a0a great vantage point sitting on press row right underneath the basket. \u00a0 The game was the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[208,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-uncategorized","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n