Tal Brody

Talbot "Tal" Brody (Hebrew: טל ברודי; born August 30, 1943), nicknamed Mr. Basketball, is an American-Israeli former professional basketball player and current goodwill ambassador of Israel. Brody was drafted #12 in the 1965 NBA draft, but chose to pass up an NBA career, to instead play basketball in Israel. He played on national basketball teams of both the United States and Israel, and served in the armies of both countries.

A New Jersey All-star basketball player in high school, Brody led his team to an undefeated state championship. In college, he was a high-scoring, slick-passing All-American and All-Big Ten point guard in 1965, while playing for the University of Illinois. That year, he was drafted 12th in the NBA draft. Before the NBA season started, he traveled to Israel, where he led the American team to a gold medal in the 1965 Maccabiah Games. Convinced by Moshe Dayan and others, to return to Israel to help elevate the country's basketball team and morale, he passed up his NBA career, to instead play basketball for Maccabi Tel Aviv.

In 1977, he led Maccabi Tel Aviv to the FIBA European Champions Cup (now called EuroLeague) championship. Along the way, his team defeated the heavily favored Soviet Red Army team, CSKA Moscow. Brody's famous remark upon beating the Soviets – "We are on the map! And we are staying on the map – not only in sports, but in everything." – became a part of Israeli culture. It has been used for decades, in various contexts, from political speeches, to National Lottery commercials.

Early life Brody is Jewish, and the son of Max and Shirley Brody. His father and paternal grandfather had emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States, spending years in Mandatory Palestine, along the way. His father immigrated from Poland to Mandatory Palestine and lived there for three years in the 1920s, working as an engineer on the construction of the Rothenberg electric station, the country's first. Both his father and his grandfather, who lived in Mandatory Palestine for 10 years, helped build the country's first airfield, in Herzliya. Asked by his yearbook what he wanted to be in his life, he said that he would like to become either a professional basketball player, or an FBI agent. His team won the Big Ten Championship, and was rated the number three team in the nation.

He was voted a 1965 All-American, along with fellow college basketball players like Rick Barry, Bill Bradley, and Billy Cunningham. He was also named first team All-Big Ten, a second team academic All American, and a Converse top-10 player. The Sporting News picked him as one of the top 10 players in the nation, along with Bradley, Barry, Cunningham, and Jerry Sloan. In 1965, he graduated from Illinois with a bachelor's degree in physical education. After the camp, the Bullets provided him with an apartment in Baltimore. He led the team to a gold medal, as he played alongside Ronald Green, Steve Chubin, and Ron Watts.

Early Israeli basketball career (1966–69) Brody returned to Israel in 1966 to "take up that challenge", help an entire country rather than just one team, and take one year out of his life to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv. He felt he could do something "special". The experience, and the excitement Brody generated, made a deep impression on him.

He had initially intended to help Israeli basketball for only one year. But that one year, and the excitement it generated (while at the same time, in the days preceding the June 1967 Six-Day War, Egypt and Syria were threatening to push the Israelis into the sea), pulled Brody into a second year.

U.S. military service (1968–70) Brody returned to the U.S. in 1968, to fulfill his military duty during the Vietnam War. He also played for the USA Men's National Basketball Team, which finished fifth at the 1970 FIBA World Championship in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in May 1970. During that championship competition, he received a letter from Moshe Dayan, who asked him to return to Israel. Later, as a reserve in the Israel Defense Forces, he was tasked with supporting the Israeli Air Force, in which his son Ron later served. He led the national team to a gold medal, as they beat a U.S. team led by Ernie Grunfeld in the finals.

Brody played for Maccabi Tel Aviv until 1980. He won ten Israeli League championships with the team, and six Israel State Cups, in what has been described as a "stellar" and "amazing" career. in 211 games.

Brody also played for the senior Israel national team, scoring 1,219 points in 78 games. When the Israeli Omri Casspi, was drafted in the first round of the 2009 NBA draft, by the Sacramento Kings, to play in the U.S., Brody called it "the completion of a circle".

The FIBA European Champions Cup Championship; "We are on the map!"

The highlight of his career came in 1977. It was the apex of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was boycotting Israel. And the Communists were well known for using sports to glorify what they billed as their supremacy over the West. The game pitted the capitalist West against the Communist East, and Israel against the country that was supplying its enemies with weapons. The game also matched the country of Israel, with a total of a mere 4 million inhabitants, against the Soviets, with their 290 million people.

The remark was spontaneous, and unprepared. As Brody put it, it just "came out of my heart, at that instant." It reflected a physical victory by the nascent Jewish Zionist idea, and national pride. It became Israel's most famous quote. The phrase was as significant for Israelis as U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong's statement – "One small step for man; one giant step for mankind" – had been for Americans, vis-a-vis the space age. It was also used by former Soviet refusenik and Israeli Yisrael BaAliyah party leader and Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky, in 1998. The Israeli National Lottery Board spoofed it in a television commercial, in which a winning racehorse with an American accent stated: "We are on the racetrack, and we will stay on the racetrack." Similarly, when Israel's Davis Cup team beat the powerhouse Russian Davis Cup team in a shocking victory in the 2009 Davis Cup tennis quarter-finals, Prime Minister Netanyahu telephoned the Israel Tennis Association Director General and echoed Brody's statement of over three decades earlier, saying: "We're back on the map".

Back home, hundreds of thousands of Israelis celebrated spontaneously in the streets, and 150,000 in Tel Aviv congregated in celebration in what is now Rabin Square. Many jumped into its fountain, splashing in water and champagne. Brody was credited with being so inspiring that basketball became Israel's number one sport, surpassing soccer.

The FIBA European Champions Cup finals were played in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on April 7, 1977. Brody, as the team captain, received the European Cup trophy from FIBA's Secretary General, and lifted it over his head. Brody himself became widely known as an Israeli national hero, and as a symbol of Israel's achievements.

In 1978, the team was also a semi-finalist in the 1977–78 FIBA European Champions Cup basketball competition. The Israel Prize Committee noted that he was "an excellent athlete who set an outstanding example" for Israeli immigrants and absorption.

In Israel, Brody is renown as a national hero. He is compared with similarity to that of Michael Jordan in the United States. As Israel's first modern-day sports hero, he is a symbol of all the young country's achievements, and not only its successes in basketball. He is known by the nicknames: "Mr. Basketball", and "The man who put Israel on the Map".

Halls of Fame In 1996, Brody was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and in March 2011 he was inducted into the U.S. National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Israeli Basketball Hall of Fame. He represented Maccabi Tel Aviv as it became the first non-U.S. basketball team to be honored at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, in a special exhibition in 2008 entitled "Putting Israel on the Map". However, despite being nominated numerous times, he has yet to be inducted.

Life after playing basketball

Basketball-related After he retired as a player, Brody continued with Maccabi Tel Aviv as an assistant coach.

In addition, he has been Maccabi Tel Aviv's volunteer liaison with the National Basketball Association since 1988, helping organize games between Maccabi Tel Aviv and various NBA teams.

Brody was featured in a 2008 documentary entitled The Jewish Basketball Hall of Fame, Volume 1, produced by Yisrael Lifschutz. He was also featured in a book by the title: A Voice Called; Stories of Jewish Heroism, by Yossi Katz, which was published in 2010.

Business career After retiring from playing basketball, Brody established, and was chief executive officer and a co-owner of, a sporting goods export/import/distribution business named Sports United Ltd. At the same time, he ran basketball clinics across Israel. He ultimately sold the sporting goods business to his partner.

He then entered the insurance business. Brody established, owned, and managed an independent insurance firm named Tal Brody Insurance Agency in Tel Aviv. The company handled pension programs, provident funds, and health and education funds for 20 years. He ultimately sold the business in 2008. As part of the program, he coaches basketball and gives basketball clinics to schoolchildren, members of kibbutzim, residents of development towns, and soldiers in the Israeli army.

Political career (2008) Brody was asked to join Yitzhak Yitzhaky's One Israel party in 1980, after he retired. But he rejected the offer. He did not view himself as a politician, and was not seeking a political career. Though he joined the Likud party in the 1990s, he was not openly active in politics because he did not believe that an active sportsman should involve himself in politics.

When Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu approached him personally, however, and asked him to step forward for the country, Brody for the first time considered entering politics.

Brody announced in August 2007 that he was seriously considering running for the Knesset in the general election, as a Likud candidate. In a November 2008 press conference Brody and Netanyahu held, Brody said: "We need to change the situation in the country. 70% of the people think there is corruption in politics." Netanyahu introduced Brody as his future Minister of Sports and Culture. He joked, however, that if he were to win, he looked forward to playing basketball against President Obama, who is an intense basketball fan.

In the December 2008 Likud primaries, however, he was not elected to Likud's list of candidates. Remarking on his feelings about the primaries, Brody said that he had only become involved in the political process because he thought it was the obligation of people to come forward to serve the country, but that his involvement in the process had made him aware of the fact that many local voters rely on the "professional politicians" for jobs. In that unpaid position—the only money he receives is compensation for his expenses—he speaks to audiences outside of Israel about Israel's culture, sports, and successes, and Israelis' daily lives.

His trips outside Israel are coordinated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and by Israel's embassies and consulates. He speaks at schools, universities, Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and community centers, synagogues, Christian events, African-American organizations, and fundraising events.

Personal life

After Brody returned to Israel in 1970, he married a 20-year-old Israeli woman, Ronit Born, in a wedding that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan attended as his guest of honor. Brody and his second wife Tirtza, whom he married in the early 1980s, live in Netanya in Israel. He has three children (two from his first marriage (Ron and Kareen), and a daughter Linor from his second wife's first marriage), and five grandchildren.

His American-accented Hebrew is the result of his not having formally studied the language when he arrived in Israel—as he thought his stay would be a temporary one, rather than a decades-long one. He instead picked up the language from colloquial use. His Hebrew consequently remains a source of amusement in Israel, and has been humorously targeted by friends and family, as well as by Eretz Nehederet, Israel's version of Saturday Night Live.