Basketball Fever - Catch It!

Sorry about another basketball review, but this was the championship game and I had a ticket as part of the package I bought yesterday. This was too huge an event to miss. Except for an upset in 1993, Maccabbi T.A. had won every tournament in the last 14 years, Holon was set to dethrone them. I called ahead and was told the game started at 6 p.m., but when I arrived at the Arena, nobody was there.

World's best job, there are these guys who just walk their bomb sniffing dogs around and around smelling all the parked motorcycles, some even get pee'd on, but I wasn't fast enough to take that picture.

Really, nobody. (except the cops/army). I entered at game time and I swear there were no more than 200 people in a stadium that holds 12,000. I couldn’t believe I had screwed up the timing. Then it hit me, this was the consolation game for third place. Now I’m really at a loss to explain this; admittedly the two teams were from out of town (about an hour away), but were the fans so disappoint at not being in the finals that they didn’t even show up. Perhaps this is what happens when you don’t have an underlying college base. It was very curious, even die hard basketball fans interested in the championship game didn't attend.

Only a handful of die hard fans clumped together showed up for the consolation game, their cheers echoed around the empty area.

By 8:00, however, the stands were packed for the final game. Whatever women were there for the semis, they decided to stay home, because honestly I did not see more than 100 women in the entire stands. This was the most intensely male event I’ve ever been to except maybe the huge communal urinal at the Oakland Coliseum. The game began with the singing of Hatikva, the national anthem. I’ve included the complete video and hope that you can down load it. If not, it was incredibly emotional; I’m sure I’m romanticizing the experience and to the average Israeli this is nothing more than a perfunctory pre-game irritant, but to me it was simply overwhelming. By the end of the song, tears were running down my cheeks and I was shaking. I don’t know how to explain it, it felt like for a brief moment everyone put the basketball game on a back burner and focused all their attention on the importance of the survival of the country. It was such an intense, collective experience and then suddenly it was over and the game was on.

Here is the Hatkiva video, I hope you can download it; I wonder if there are Americans (other than ex-POWs) who get emotional at hearing the Star Spangled Banner.

The game did not disappoint. Cheering started about a half hour in advance and continued until a half hour afterwards. I have never been in a stadium as loud as this, it was like Sears Point during an car race. The video doesn’t even do justice to the noise level and enthusiasm. The teams were never more than 4 points apart and with 2 seconds to go Malik (not his slave name) Dixon an American from Arkansas State made an incredible layout to win. And as they say, “the crowd went wild.” I made a couple of instant friends who explained to me that there is a “2 Jew” rule, namely there must be 2 Israelis per team on the floor at all times. I observed that one of the teams was all black and was told that many American players come over, get married have kids and become Israeli citizens and then they are counted as Israeli for the rule. At half-time Rick Barry and Dr. J (Erving) were introduced for some charity they have that teaches basketball to Israelis and Palestinians and the crowd really ate that up.

I took this video just as the final buzzer sounded, but honestly the noise level didn't really increase, it was out of control for almost 3 hours.

Special Note: It's really refreshing to see that none of the athletes thank Jesus for their win, although some of the managers do wear yarmulkes. Also, there was a sprinkling of LA Laker jerseys, but nobody else.

After the game I walked home through kind of a shanty town around midnight. More on this later, but I felt safe and I kept thinking that most, actually all of the people here have for different reasons actively chosen to be here. Either they were running away (Russians), were thrown out (Ethiopians) or were hired to work (Pilipinos). As has been often observed that’s kind of the American model, except for African-Americans who did not choose to come voluntarily. I really don’t know how big a difference it makes, but if you make a conscious decision to come to Israel, I think you tend to have a vested interest in fitting into the society as opposed to being anti-social, all other things being equal. Anyway, I know I’m probably being naïve, but (getting back to the Hatikva observation) there is clearly a social fabric here and if you are Jewish (I know that’s a big IF) then you are automatically part of it, which translates for me into feeling safe. Ok, no more basketball (except I’m going down to Holon tomorrow (Friday) and see if I can catch the parade, since there can be no parades on the Sabbath, but you already knew that, right?!

And don't forget, there's no 'HAM" in "HABURGER"