{"id":17441,"date":"2025-07-24T02:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T02:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/17441\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T02:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T02:10:07","slug":"hapoel-tel-aviv-owner-says-mike-james-wants-to-join-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/17441\/","title":{"rendered":"Hapoel Tel Aviv owner says Mike James wants to join the team"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eurohoops team \/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Hapoel Tel Aviv owner Ofer Yannay stated that AS Monaco superstar Mike James wanted to join the Israeli side but his team won\u2019t release him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike James really wants to come to Hapoel,\u201d Yannay said to The Baseline Podcast<\/a>. \u201cHe would have talks with coach Dimitris Itoudis every night. But Monaco won\u2019t let him go. He can be undisciplined but they want to keep him. So they kept him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have now in the EuroLeague is a problematic situation,\u201d Yannay also mentioned. \u201cThe problem is that you have those powerhouses in EuroLeague. We are a new powerhouse but we weren\u2019t considered a powerhouse before [Vasilije] Micic. The Spanish teams \u2013 Real Madrid<\/a>, Barcelona. The Greek teams \u2013 Panathinaikos<\/a> and Olympiacos<\/a>. The Turkish teams \u2013 Fenerbahce<\/a> and Efes<\/a>. Maybe a new powerhouse in Dubai. I\u2019m not sure they are yet because they have to prove themselves. Monaco is also a powerhouse because they managed to go to the Final Four multiple times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yannay also named some other players that Hapoel targeted but was unable to sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted Marko Guduric<\/a> and TJ Shorts but then we had a problem with the Iranians,\u201d Yannay said. \u201cIt was clear that we couldn\u2019t have anyone coming in this situation. We lost Jabari Parker to Partizan Belgrade. They paid 2.5 million dollars. A lot of money. You have to deal with limitations and not getting everything that is expected. My belief is that you shouldn\u2019t let just the coach decide. This is important. At some point, the coach has his own limitations. He likes players who are more organized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hapoel will host its EuroLeague homes games in Sofia, Bulgaria and not in Israel due to the ongoing situation in the country. Yannay explained why he believes that the EuroLeague games of both Hapoel and Maccabi Tel Aviv<\/a> should once again be held in Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy aren\u2019t the games back in Israel? I know that we had whatever we had. But now everything is cool. Nothing is on,\u201d Yannay mentioned. \u201cIt\u2019s not clear why the games aren\u2019t back in Tel Aviv\u2026 There\u2019s a lot of politics in this. I met with EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejunas in Abu Dhabi. I told him: Listen, what you\u2019re experiencing now is the same situation that Israel had in the Eurovision. The establishment is against Israel. The establishment of the EuroLeague now, with all the teams and the politics. They are against Israel. It has nothing to do with safety. If this was a safety issue, there wouldn\u2019t be no Israeli League. The fact that FIBA allows the Israeli League to be played it means that there are no safety issues. It\u2019s safe enough here to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI told Motiejunas, what you\u2019re missing is that in Eurovision when you finish the votes of the establishment, Israel was 16th. Then you went to the popular vote \u2013 the vote of the public. And Israel was No. 1 and we finished 2nd. I told him that basketball is about the fans. And the fans want to come to Israel. We miss our Serbian, Greek, Spanish, Italian friends. They want to come to Israel. Why are you holding back from the fans of basketball the chance to come to Israel. This is wrong. And this year we made a great move forward to bring the games back by building this team. It think it\u2019s going to be very clear that it\u2019s a very big thing if the team of Hapoel will play in an empty arena.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Eurohoops team \/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net Hapoel Tel Aviv owner Ofer Yannay stated that AS Monaco superstar Mike James wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-17441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}