Hapoel Tel Aviv (basketball)

	Hapoel Tel Aviv (basketball)
Founded	1935
Hall	Drive in Arena ; (3,504 seats)
Homepage	http://www.hapoeluta.org/
owner	Ussishkin Supporters Trust
Trainer	Danny Franco
league	Ligat ha'Al ; 2016/17: 10th place
Colours	Red and white
home	Away
	successes
	5 Israeli championships (1960, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1969) ; 4 Israeli cup wins (1962, 1969, 1984, 1993)

Hapoel Tel Aviv Basketball was founded in 1935 as a basketball department in the Hapoel Tel Aviv club . Since 1995 the department is no longer supported by the Histadrut , but has been owned by private patrons . After a sporting crash in 2006, the name of the organization was finally taken over in 2010 by the previously founded club Hapoel Ussischkin , which had emerged from a fan initiative comparable to FC United of Manchester . Since 2012 the men's team has been playing in the highest Israeli division Ligat ha'Al again . The men's team had its most successful time in the 1960s, when they won five championships and successfully stood up to the otherwise dominant series champions and bitter local rivals Maccabi Tel Aviv . Until 2006, the team initially belonged to the top division and won its last national title for the time being with the fourth cup victory in 1993.

history

Hapoel was a founding member of the Ligat ha'Al in 1954 and initially won three runners-up championships behind local rivals Maccabi from Tel Aviv from 1957 to 1959 . In 1960 and 1961 they were the first team after Maccabi to win the league competition and in 1962 they also won the cup competition, which previously only Maccabi had won. After the fifth championship and the double in 1969, no further titles were won, while Maccabi under coach Ralph Klein also celebrated international success with Tal Brody and Miki Berkovich and won the FIBA European Cup in 1977 , which helped the local rival in Israel to a legendary status. After two runner-up championships in 1970 and 1971, Hapoel won two runner-up championships in 1979 and 1980 in the 1970s.

From the 1980s, Hapoel played in Tel Aviv in a hall on the street in Tel Aviv named after Menachem Ussishkin . In the cup competition they lost the cup final three times in a row in the 1970s after the defeat in the final in 1970 between 1976 and 1978. After the final defeat in 1983, however, you could win a title again in the cup competition for the first time in 1984. In the following season they finally reached the championship final against Maccabi, which had been decided in a play-off series since 1983 and had won all Israeli championships since Hapoel's last championship in 1969. After winning the first game, however, Hapoels American star player Mike Largey, who had decided the first game with his points, was suspended in the second game after a physical argument with Maccabi's Israeli international Motti Aroesti and suspended for the other games in the series. Hapoel lost the other two finals, while Hapoel fans interpreted the suspension of Largey as a deliberate provocation from Maccabi, which increased the rivalry to the series champions even further. On the part of the fans of Hapoel, there were repeated allegations that Maccabi, as the Israeli figurehead on the international stage, was deliberately favored by the association and referees, which in individual cases led to violent clashes with Maccabi fans.

After the 1985 runner-up, there were three runner-ups each between 1987 and 1989 and between 1992 and 1994. In 1993, the cup winner lost the championship final series against that of Pini Gershon , who had coached Hapoel for one season after the 1985 runner-up, Hapoel trained Galil Elyon , Maccabi's title streak since 1969 and the first non-Tel Aviv team to win the championship. After the runner-up in 1994, again behind Maccabi, Hapoel fell behind Hapoel Jerusalem as the greatest national challenger to Maccabi. From 1995, the Hapoel association was owned by a group of investors around Shaul Eisenberg, who, with the exception of a three-year episode in which Vladimir Gussinski invested in the team, remained a key figure in the fortunes of Hapoel until 2009. After Hapoel had clearly lost the championship final series in 2004 and 2005 to Maccabi, Hapoel moved from the "Ussischkin Hall" to the larger Yad Eliyahu Arena in the 2005/06 season , which has been the home of local rivals Maccabi since it opened in 1963. This step was highly controversial among Hapoel's supporters and ultimately led to the founding of Hapoel Ussischkin in 2007 , which, comparable to FC United of Manchester, started as a fan-based club in British football, initially in the lowest division. The split in the supporters finally put Hapoel's professional team in distress, which was registered a class lower in the Leumit league for the 2006/07 season due to a lack of sponsors , but was unable to survive there with young players and was directly relegated to the third-highest division. The city of Tel Aviv began demolishing the Ussishkin Hall in 2006 and was finally able to enforce this before the Supreme Court in 2007, despite petitions and complaints from Hapoel fans.

Under coach and sports director Uri Shelef , son of national player Ami Shelef and brother of European Cup winner Gur Shelef , Hapoel Ussischkin rose three times in a row until 2010, while the actual men's team from Hapoel Tel Aviv slipped into the fourth division and was dissolved in December 2009. Hapoel's naming rights were acquired from an unknown patron and given free of charge to the fan-based Hapoel Ussischkin. In 2011, the team, now again operating as Hapoel Tel Aviv, reached the semi-finals of the national cup competition as a second division team, but lost the decisive play-off series for promotion to the top division, which only succeeded a year later in 2012. As an Israeli second division team, they also took part in the Balkan International Basketball League for the first time in an international club competition in that season, in which they were defeated in the semi-finals at the Final Four to the national competitor and later title winner Hapoel Gilboa Galil . After the resurgence, the old rivalry between Hapoel and Maccabi revived and carried over to the current players when Maccabi's captain and national player Guy Pnini insulted his Swedish opponent Jonathan Skjöldebrand in the local derby in 2012 and was subsequently suspended, as well as the Maccabi captaincy first had to give up again. After returning to the Ligat ha'Al in 2013, Hapoel reached eighth place, fourth in 2014 and seventh in 2015 after the main round and was eliminated in the first play-off round for the championship. After the quarter-final defeat against Hapoel Eilat in 2014, their coach Oded Kattash became the new coach of Hapoel Tel Aviv for the 2014/15 season. At the end of the 2014/15 season, Hapoel's sports director Uri Shelef died at the end of March 2015, who initially organized the return to the national top as Hapoel Ussischkin's coach and then as sports director.