The 70-year-old boy: Back to the stories of Pini Gershon - Walla! sport

2021-11-11T08:38:39.316Z

The star who disappeared before the historic championship game. The fake flight ticket presented to McDonald's. Leaf's dubious citizenship. The reprimand at the oil rig in the kibbutz. And the decision cost him a million dollars

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Wickside: A weekly column by Ahrela Weisberg

The 70-year-old boy: Back to the stories of Pini Gershon

The star that disappeared before the historic championship.

The fake flight ticket presented to McDonald's.

Leaf's dubious citizenship.

The reprimand call at the Nafta in the kibbutz.

And the decision cost him a million dollars.

The legendary coach celebrates 70, and we are reminded of seven great stories from life

Dynasty, Union: Pini Gershon and David Blatt in a joint interview

To the full article

"They say I'm a genius, but I'm not a big jerk."

With the Super League Cup (Photo: Government Press Office, Avi Ohayon)

The dubious citizenship of Brad Leaf

"The statute of limitations already applies to this story, so it's time to expose it," Gershon told me in 2013, in an article in "Israel Today" that united the heroes of the historic Hapoel Galil Elyon championship. "Brad Leaf came to Israel with a certificate from some rabbi confirming that he had converted to Judaism, and thus received Israeli citizenship. The form in general read 'Mrs. Brad Leaf'. Things that can only be done in the council building in Kiryat Shmona. "

Leaf himself, one of the greatest nationals in league history, told Walla! Sports: "I had no idea then, and I have no idea to this day how I got my Israeli passport. I was an innocent kid from Indiana, I came straight from college, I trained twice a day and all I cared about was just playing basketball. I didn't even know what a stranger was and what it was. A citizen. I just did what I was told, and I went on the field. Then, at an advanced stage in my career,I played for the team and it was one of the special experiences I had. "

TJ Leaf, Brad's son, who was born in Israel, summed things up simply in 2015: "I heard something about Dad's citizenship being obtained in a way that is not the most kosher, but I think that connection did good for everyone, didn't I?".

A lineage that will not return, and one that has paid off.

Anthony Parker and Sharas (Photo: Official Website, Avi Ohayon, GPO)

Let's cut Anthony Parker

Over the years, Gershon has coached quite a few legends, and there is a long list of stars who have reached their peak under his guidance. On the way there, they also went through crises - and there was one pattern that was repeated with the biggest of them all: at least three were convinced that they were on their way to being cut from the team, before they recovered and swept it away to win titles.

The greatest and most prominent of all was Anthony Parker. "When we decided to go for it, I was in the minority," Gershon said. "David Blatt, Shimon Mizrahi and Moni Fanan wanted Marcus Brown, who was a better scorer and already came with receipts from France and experience in Europe. I insisted, and the interest around him was in the air all the time. I was a bit hesitant. I was under pressure that if we did not win the European Championship, I would be blamed for this story. There was a meeting, we thought of replacing it, and then Shimon said 'guys, he is new, we are not cutting.

"I think he was too teamed up. We loved that he was a rebounder and a good guard, but you know what it's like in the Middle East - look at your column of points. His agent started dripping at him that if he did not change the conduct, it would not end well, and really since he "He really changed. He started looking for the ring, staying after training to throw in the basket, raising the percentage to three. By the end of my career I had already used him at all as a coordinator ... it just shows how much talent he had."

From the oil to the hoist.

Andrew Kennedy celebrates historic championship in 1993 (Photo: screenshot, from the sports channel)

Let's cut Andrew Kennedy

An even more serious story took place at the opening of the 1992/93 season in the Upper Galilee, and the target was none other than Andrew Kennedy. "Hapoel Gvat had a new foreigner named Billy Martin, who arrived two days earlier and did not even know the exercises," Gershon explains. "Suddenly, in a training game against us, he scored 32 points (45, according to another version). : 'Let Andrew know that tomorrow we will meet in the hut of the naphtha in the kibbutz, and he will go home.' "

"The next day I told Kennedy 'You're going home. You sold me. I came to take a championship, and with someone like you I can not go to war.' Andrew was a man in men, one of the great players I coached. "Lou Job. I'm sorry, understand me. I promise to give everything by the end of the season." Kennedy did stay, and even scored 21.4 points per game, more than any other player in the Galilee during the Cherry season.

"You're the only one who can beat Zeljko."

With his aides in Greece, Sapropoulos and Edelstein (Photo: Official Website, Action Images)

Let's cut Ariel McDonald too

"Yes, Ariel McDonald was also a candidate to fly. He got drunk one night at the club, at three in the morning he was still there, and I found out by chance. The next morning, in training, he tried to catch a distance of 25 meters from me. He did not know I already had experience "In these things with Leaf in the Galilee. We invited him to a meeting with me and Moni, and we put on the table a voucher for a plane ticket, which was fake of course. Ariel realized he was going home, and he was in no small problem.

- Sharonas Jasikevicius or Ariel McDonald?

"David and I saw Ariel at the Final Four in 1997 in Rome, when he was playing in Ljubljana. It was in the days when we were still going to study basketball. Sharas was a much bigger winner than McDonald's.

"The others? Some will call them teammates and some will say they run away from the ball. Sharas never gave anyone else the chance to win or lose, and McDonald was much more team-oriented. "Yourself, he would have done it. Ariel kept much better than Sharas, not that it's great wisdom, and he played to move the team."

- Which of them was easier to train?

"Depends on how sensitive you are to alcohol. Let's say, next to both of them it was impossible to smoke, because you could have caught fire. I knew Sharas was problematic even when I coached the reserve team and we played against Lithuania. If you make forces, I first take Sharas. "

"In the neighborhood, if forces do, I take Sharas before McDonald's" (Photo: GettyImages)

Believers kibbutzniks

When Gershon returned to the Upper Galilee, in the summer of 1992, he set a goal that was perceived as illusory at the time: to win the national championship, after 23 consecutive years of Maccabi Tel Aviv. The journalists, fans, colleagues and even the players on his team looked at him like crazy. "I will not forget it," said the team's player at the time, Nir Matalon. "First group meeting, we sit on the bench in Bloom Village and Pini in front of us, leans on the concrete and says we're here to take a championship. We looked at him like crazy. Brad gave elbow to the late Steve Malubic, and they both started grinning. Then Brad told us' hey is fucking Crazy. "

The director of the Galilee in those days, Amit Gal: "Pini took the management to a meeting at Globus Group, which became our efforts. ".

Gershon: "They relied on my Jura to bring them money. I was on probation at all. They tried to save me. The coach who was in front of me, Molly Katzourin, received $ 75,000 per season. I agreed to give a maximum of 57,000. I told them 'no problem "But if I bring a championship, you give me back the missing 18,000 and double it." Globus promised me that if we won the championship, he would arrange a role for me in a film alongside Sylvester Stallone. "He does not exist. I'm still waiting."

The voice behind it all.

Gershon with Rafi Ginat (Photo: Berni Ardov)

The mysterious disappearance before the championship game

11 years after Gershon met Leaf, that is - Mrs. Brad Leaf, the two faced their climax: they had already ousted Maccabi Tel Aviv, as the coach promised, in the playoff semifinals, and marched with a 1: 2 advantage over Hapoel Tel Aviv in the final series; One more home win, and history will be complete. Only then did things start to go wrong.

"Because of Brad we almost lost the championship," Gershon recalled at the rotation meeting. "We scheduled a workout for six in the evening, and two hours before that I'm getting a call from a colleague. 'Listen, Brad's late for training. There's a car at the airport in Mahnayim waiting for him. But Liff did not show up. "I grabbed a colleague aside, I said to him 'Tell me, could you be covering someone up?'. He tried to dodge and did not answer, until he had no choice and he admitted: 'I swear to you, I can not find the person, since the game we do not know where is he'".

Matalon intervened in the story and remarked with a laugh: "Why did you not ask? I went out with him after the game,Do you know how much we drank? "

Only the next day, the day before Game 4, did Leaf appear at the gates of Kfar Blum. Gershon: "I go into the parquet and see him standing and throwing. He was already sweating all over. As soon as he caught me, he started running away in a frenzy. So I left the hall and entered from the second gate. He tried to run to the locker room, but I did, like a big player, The pitch. "

- What did you do to him?

"I asked him 'Where the hell were you?' And I smell all the alcohol on him. Brad replied, 'Pini, I screwed up, I drank, I'm sorry.' I told him, 'Listen to me well. I know exactly where you were, and next time take your trainer with you, you dog.' "All this goodness landed on him. He said 'I love you, and I'm going to run for an hour on the football field now.' Now, I mention, Brad's one who failed to finish two sprints."

And how did Leaf play the next day?

Almost unnecessary to ask.

The captain was the best player on the field and scored 23 points.

Upper Galilee flew to a 52:72 advantage, Gershon allowed the children to play and become part of history.

It ended 85:89.

Pini took the time to eat the cherry in front of the cameras, after he finished licking the whipped cream smeared on his face.

"We did not stop drinking all night," the coach recalled, "and you see, I did not drink more than Coke until I arrived in the Galilee."

"I know exactly where you were, and next time you will take your coach with you."

Brad Leaf (Photo: screenshot, from the sports channel)

The peak retirement cost a million dollars

"After winning the Super League with Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2001, I had romances with teams from Spain and Serbia, but mostly with the Greeks. From the moment I defeated Zeljko Oberdovic in the final, no one in Greece knew me. Five years later, when I came to Olympiacos, "I asked them why they wanted me and they replied 'because you are the only one who can beat him.'

- Still, you retired at the end of that season, and returned to coach Maccabi two years later.

"I am said to be a genius, but the truth is that I am no small jerk. I said that if I took the European Championship, I would retire, and as a moron I kept my word. Simon said to me: I do not care about anything, you remain a coach." That I'll start a career as a businessman, that I'll invest in real estate and regrets, but in the end you have to do the thing you're best at.

I lost a million dollars on this decision. "

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Source: walla

All sports articles on 2021-11-11