Featured Jewish Basketball Player of the Week

Sue Bird

Sue Bird was drafted #1 Overall by the Seattle Storm in 2002, has won 4 WNBA Championships (2004, 2010, 2018, 2020) and played her final WNBA game this past September. Over the span of her career, the 5-foot 9-inch guard averaged 11.3 points/game, 5.5 rebounds/game and 39.1% 3-point shooting percentage. Bird is a Syosset, NY native and went to the University of Connecticut for college, where she won 2 NCAA Championships (2000, 2002). Her father is an Ashkenazi Jew of Russian Jewish ancestry, and she holds both Israeli and American citizenship.

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This past October, Ryan Turell was selected No. 27 overall by the Detroit Pistons minor league affiliate Motor City Cruise in the 2022 NBA G League Draft, becoming the first Orthodox Jewish player in NBA history. The 6-foot 7-inch guard and Los Angeles, CA native played for the Division-3 Yeshiva University Maccabees and graduated with a degree in marketing from the Yeshiva University. Turell averaged 27.1 points/game last year for Yeshiva, leading the NCAA in scoring throughout all three divisions.

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Nancy Lieberman-Cline

Nancy Lieberman-Cline played 4 years of collegiate basketball at Old Dominion University, where she averaged 18.1 points/game, 9 rebounds/game and led her team to 2 consecutive Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) championships (1978-1979, 1979-1980). In the 1980s, the Queens, NY native was the #1 draft pick for two short-lived professional women’s basketball leagues, the Women’s Basketball League (WBL) and the Women’s American Basketball Association (WABA), during a time when few professional basketball opportunities were offered for women. Lieberman played for the Dallas Diamonds in both leagues. She was the first woman to try out for an NBA team and the first woman to play for in a men’s professional league in 1986 with the Springfield Flame in the United States Basketball League (USBL). Lieberman was also the first woman to participate in the Globetrotters world tour, when she played for the Washington Generals in 1988. At the age of 40, she joined the Phoenix Mercury in the newly formed WNBA for the 1997 season. Lastly, she was the first woman to coach as professional men’s team when she was with the Texas Legends of the NBA’s G-League (professional minor league) from 2009 to 2011. Nancy Lieberman was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, NY and raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce.

Sources: Image | Jewish Information | Basketball Information

Amar’e Stoudemire

Amar’e Stoudemire played 14 seasons in the NBA from 2002 to 2016, averaging 18.9 point/game and 7.8 rebounds/game. The 6-foot 10-inch forward-center and Lake Wales, FL native played most of his career for the Phoenix Suns, but also played for the New York Knicks, the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat. Stoudemire landed in Israel from 2016 to 2019 where he played for Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv. He completed his orthodox conversation to Judaism in 2020 with the Hebrew name: Yahoshafat Ben Avraham.

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Alysha Clark

Alysha Clark was drafted #17 Overall in the 2010 WNBA Draft by the San Antonio Silver Stars but has played most of her career with the Seattle Storm. The 5-foot 11-inch forward was recently acquired by the Washington Mystics and has averaged 7.0 point/game and 3.5 rebounds/game over the length of her career. In 2011, while splaying overseas in Israel for Hapoel Rishon LeZion, Clark learned that she was Jewish according to Jewish law, because of her maternal Jewish grandparents. She eventually obtained Israeli citizenship to continue playing in Israel, where she played for 3 different teams between 2010 and 2016.

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Deni Avdija

Deni Avdija was selected by the Washington Wizards as the 9^th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft at the age of 19, becoming Israel’s highest-ever draft pick. In his first two years in the league, Serbian Israeli Avdija has averaged 8.1 points/game, 5.5 rebounds/game and 2.7 assists/game. The 6-foot 9-inch forward and Herzliya native previously played for Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Israeli Basketball Premier League and is the third Israeli to play in the NBA, after Omri Casspi and Gal Mekel. Avdija was born in Beit Zera, a small kibbutz in northern Israel, in 2001 to his Muslim father, Zufer Avdija, and his Jewish mother, Sharon Artzi. His father played professional basketball in present-day Kosovo and in Israel and his mother was both a basketball player and track-and-field athlete.

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Senda Berenson Abbott

Senda Berenson Abbott, later known as the “Mother of Women’s Basketball” was born as Senda Valvrojenski in Vilna, Lithuania on March 19, 1868. Her father, Albert, immigrated to the United States in 1874, settled in Boston and changed the family name to Berenson. At age 23, Berenson began teaching at Smith College and shortly after, read about a new game called “Basket Ball”. The game was invented by Dr. James Naismith and had been used as a class exercise for boys. She adopted the game as a team exercise for her female students and conducted the first official game of women’s basketball between the Smith sophomores and freshmen. This was a great deal as team sports were deemed as too strenuous and dangerous for women at the time. Within two years, there were hundreds of women’s basketball teams across the country. Berenson wrote the first official rule book for women’s collegiate basketball, eventually published as Basket Ball for Women. She continued to edit the publication until the 1916-1917 issue. Many of the rules that Berenson developed were used by women’s basketball for the next seventy years. Senda died on February 16, 1954 and 30 years later in 1984, her contributions to basketball were recognized as she was the first woman inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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Rudy LaRusso

Rudolph “Rudy” LaRusso, whose father was Italian and mother was Jewish, played 10 seasons in the NBA from 1959 to 1969, mostly with the Los Angeles Lakers, and averaged 15.6 points/game and 9.4 rebounds/game. The 6-foot 8-inch forward and Brooklyn, NY native was drafted in the 2^nd round by the Minneapolis Lakers and graduated from Dartmouth College. “Roughhouse Rudy”, known for his toughness and rebounding, reached the NBA Finals four times with the Lakers, unfortunately losing each series to the Boston Celtics.

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Shay Doron

Shay Doron was selected by the New York Liberty as the 16th pick of the second round of the 2007 WNBA Draft. Doron played one season for the Liberty before returning home to Israel to play for Elitzur Ramle in the Israeli league. Her team reached the semi-finals of the EuroCup Women’s competition and won the Israeli league title. Prior to her professional career, the 5-foot 9-inch guard and Ramat Hasharon native played collegiate basketball for the University of Maryland Terrapins (2003-2007), where she averaged 14 points/game and 4 rebounds/game. Doron helped the Terrapins win their first NCCA National Championship over Duke University in 2006, the same year she was named to the U.S. National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. She also played for Maccabi Ashdod from 2014-2020.

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