LIGAT WINNER

'Ligat Ha'al' (Hebrew: ליגת העל), often referred to as the 'Israeli Premier League' or for sponsorship reasons as 'Ligat Winner', is a league competition for Israeli basketball, making it Israel's primary basketball competition.

Contents

Overview

Relation with the NBA

Titles by team

External links

Overview

Ligat Winner comprises the top 10 basketball clubs in Israel, and was founded in 1954.
The League itself is most known in Europe because of the success of the Israeli teams in the European cups such as: Euroleague, ULEB Cup and the FIBA's EuroCup (also known as Euro Cup). Many of the undrafted or free agents players from all over Europe and the NBA prefer to play in this league, until the NBA Summer Leagues are launched.
This League is the 1st Division in Israel: the team that finishes the league in last place will be dropped to the Second Division and the 2nd Division's first team will be promoted to the Premier League for the following season.
The 4 teams that finish the season on top will compete against each other for the Championship title in the "Final Four".

Relation with the NBA

During the 1980s and the early 1990s there were many basketball games between the Israeli League stars and some NBA teams such as the Phoenix Suns, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, all of those games were played in Israel.
In October 2005, the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv beat the Toronto Raptors 105-103 in an exhibition game that was played in Canada; this was the first victory of a European team over an NBA team on its home court.
Over the years, this league has exported many of its foreign players to the NBA. However, no Israeli-born player has ever played in the NBA. Three were drafted; Doron Sheffer, Yotam Halperin and Lior Eliyahu.

Titles by team

Team	Winners	Runners-Up
Maccabi Tel Aviv	47	4
Hapoel Tel Aviv	5	20
Hapoel Galil-Elyon	1	2
Hapoel Ramat Gan	0	6
Hapoel Jerusalem	0	6

External links

★ Official site

★ Segevsport coverage