Israeli and Brazilian Teams Part of NBA Pre-Season

http://bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/nba_coverage/2014/09/israeli_brazilian_teams_part_of_nba_preseason




Israeli, Brazilian teams part of NBA preseason
 

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

By:  Associated Press



NEW YORK — Euroleague champion Maccabi Tel Aviv and two other clubs will be part of what the NBA says will be a record nine preseason games featuring international teams in North America.

The league said in a statement Tuesday that Maccabi Haifa, also of Israel, and the Brazilian team Flamengo will also take part.

Maccabi Tel Aviv will open its trip Oct. 5 against the Cleveland Cavaliers and its former coach, David Blatt. It will then play in Brooklyn two nights later to face the Nets.

It will be the fourth trip in five years to the U.S. for Maccabi Haifa, which will face Washington, Portland, Sacramento and Toronto. Flamengo will travel to Phoenix, Orlando and Memphis.




bob
MY NOTE:  Maccabi - Tel Aviv is not only the Euro champion, defeating Real Madrid, they have also won 6 Triple Crowns (The Triple Crown is a term in European professional club basketball that refers to a club winning their country's top tier national domestic league, primary national domestic cup, and the top tier European continental level competition (Euroleague) in the same season. It is the highest accomplishment that a European basketball club can achieve during a season. Only 12 European clubs have achieved the Triple Crown, on 20 different occasions.) and 6 European Championships.  Only 12 teams on only 20 different seasons and Maccabi-Tel Aviv owns 6 of them.  If my math and logic are correct, that means there can only be a maximum of two other teams that have done it splitting two opportunities (i.e. if there's only one other club, they did it twice and if there were two other clubs then they each did it once). That should give you some idea just how dominating this franchise is in Euro ball. The head coach of the Maccabi-Tel Aviv team that just won the Euro Championship is now the newly named head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, David Blatt.  That should be an interesting little socio-drama, coaching his new team against his old one.  Doc did it against us last year, but Boston wasn't the still reigning champions when he did.  Maccabi-Tel Aviv is.



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