Robbery

Filled up my car for the first time today... Costed me 350 shekels aka like $100. Not impressed.

The squad

Here's a pic of the team

Healthy Livin

Today after practice the team all went to the nicer consumer area in Herzliya (called Herzliya Pituach) to eat at our new sponsors restaurant, a place called Fresh Kitchen. They hooked us up with a variety of healthy salads and other dishes. It was a fun time with the whole team just hanging out. We also each get a voucher card from the restaurant that gives us 50% off every time we go there... Cha Ching. Some of the other guys, mostly the Americans, weren't feeling the food too much but I liked it. Got some interesting stuff on the menu
http://www.mishlohim.co.il/Menu.aspx?businessID=4794&n=%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A9%20%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%98%D7%A9%D7%9F%20%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%94

Exhibition Game #2

Last night we traveled to Givat Shmuel to play the new team in the Ligat Lotto, Habeeka. Last year they won the second division so they got to be bumped up into the 1st. Unlike last game I didn't get the start, due to the arrival of our NBA-er Trevor Booker. But I still got to play a bunch. They started out the game on a 7-0 run, but our team quickly bounced back and got up by 15. I was 3/3 in the first half including a buzzer beating tip in before the halftime buzzer. In the second half the lead hovered around 9-13 for the most part and we ended up winning 76-60 I believe. Our team has been looking really good. Booker is an animal and had some incredible moves, but is also a good passer. Everyone on our team has been playing really unselfishly and it's been really fun to play with them. Another scrimmage coming up on Wednesday against a team from Germany, I think called Hollon or something like that... it's written in Hebrew so I don't know how it translates exactly

NBA in the House

Yesterday our NBA-er Trevor Booker c/o the Washington Wizards landed in Israel and today he joined the rest of the team for practice (if you don't know the name here: http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/4270/trevor-booker). He's only like 6'7, but built like a truck... and is a shockkkinggg athlete. It's unbelievable. He wasn't really dunking alot for the most part... I guess it gets boring after a while haha (not that I would know). But a couple dunks he had were just ridiculous. Anyways he seems like a nice guy, was talking with everyone in the locker room pretty normally. Was a pretty tough challenge playing against him in practice, but I'm sure it's going to help me out alot. Sidenote, he was rockin a Gucci gym bag... swag for days.

On an unrelated sad note, my boy Ben tore his ACL in our exhibition the other day and is out for the season. Really sad news seeing as 1. he's my main man and 2. he was poised to have a big year for sure. He's a hard working guy tho so I'm sure he'll get back to where he was quick.

Gameday!!

Tonight we had our first preseason game against the team from Ashkelon (also in the ligat lotto). It was a back and forth game but we ended up making a run in the fourth quarter and winning by four i think. I played probably 30 minutes I would say, and am pretty damn tired. I haven't played in a real game in a long time (except my aberration game vs the US in China). It was great to be out playing again and our team worked pretty well together. It seems we have a very unselfish team and everyone works hard. We played some pretty serious defense for most of the game. I think the final score was 76-72. Our coach said he likes to keep teams to 70 and under so it was a good effort on our part. I didn't see the box score so I'm not sure what my line was, i think i was 3/6 for 6 points. I'm sure I had alot of rebounds though... was doin a jobbb. Their team was missing one or two players still, and we were missing our nba-er so obviously we'll be different teams by the start of the season, but its always good to win. Tomorrow we get the day off so get to relax and run some errands. 1-0 baby

Media Day

Today we had a normal practice in the morning, but something a little different at night. We all got to the gym and got ready to play, but instead of full practice we had our 'media practice'. A bunch of different reporters were in the gym, as well as a number of fans. A bunch of pictures were taken and some people gave interviews (sadly not me. I know, shocking). Then we did a couple drills, practiced our plays, and had some shooting contests. At the end all the kids were there cheering for us got to come on the court and mess around. It was fun meeting some people, and playing around on the court with some of the kids. They were pretty funny and were loud. They had some cheers and also brought drums to beat during practice. It was pretty much our version of midnight madness (in college hoops). Anyways here's the link to the news story with a video. The interviews are in hebrew but check it out if you want.
http://www.one.co.il/Article/11-12/2,620,1347,0/186854.html

Tomorrow is our first scrimmage against Askelon (also in the first league). Should be fun

P.S. yes we signed autographs