Portland Trail Blazers star Deni Avdija, selected Sunday night to the NBA All-Star Game, is a bewhiskered Gal Gadot in gym shorts and sneakers.
What does that mean? It means he is an Israeli who has made it big, really big, on the world stage, and who wears his identity proudly but lightly. Being Israeli is not something he feels the need to justify, defend, or apologize for. It is simply who he is.
Like Gadot, who just wants to act, Avdija just wants to play basketball. No explanation needed.
“I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job. I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from,” he said in an interview last month in The New York Times’s sports section. “Just respect me as a basketball player.”
Avdija elaborated: “This is my country, where I was born, where I grew up. I love my country; there are a lot of great things about my country ... I’m a proud Israeli, because that’s where I grew up. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Israel and the support the people and fans gave me.”
Those sentiments resonate loudly with many Israelis precisely because they stand in stark contrast to other compatriots or co-religionists who have made it on the international stage.
Avdija’s selection struck such a nerve in Israel
Authors, Nobel Prize winners, actors, conductors, musicians, high-tech billionaires, and others who feel an urge to clarify, qualify, or distance themselves, often very loudly, from the country that shaped them or the people they come from.
Not Avdija. Nor Gadot.
That contrast helps explain why Avdija’s selection struck such a nerve in Israel right now. And it did strike a nerve. For weeks, the All-Star selection process was not only the talk of the sports pages but fodder for conversation on the general news shows as well.
Would he be selected? How could Israeli fans take part in the voting? What would it mean if he didn’t make the roster? Never have the eyes of those in Zion been so focused on a decision handed down not by diplomats, politicians, or the UN Security Council, but by fans, players, and coaches in the NBA.
On Monday morning, Avdija’s selection was the fourth item on Kan’s 8 a.m. radio news bulletin, and the first item to receive extended treatment on Army Radio’s flagship morning drive show.
For weeks, the morning hourly news bulletin has included an item on how many points he scored the night before, and whether Portland won, as if this team from a very progressive American city had all of a sudden become “Israel’s team.”
In other words, Avdija’s selection as an All-Star reserve was news. Significant news.
Why? And what does that say about the country?
First, like whenever Israel does well at the Olympics or in the Eurovision Song Contest, it answers an inward need for reassurance. It reminds Israelis, first and foremost, that we are good at normal things, like basketball and singing, not only at war and turning beepers into pocket bombs.
That reassurance, however, does not stop at home. It also has significance beyond the feel-good factor.
Israel has long suffered from being associated almost exclusively with conflict, a problem only worsened by the war in Gaza and by detractors around the world who work tirelessly to make sure that Israel is identified solely through that prism.
Then come along figures like Bar Refaeli, Gadot, and now Avdija. They burst onto the pop culture scene, enter the consciousness of the 18-35-year-old demographic that Israel has trouble reaching, and show that Israel is not only war and conflict; it is also beauty and basketball.
Does that solve Israel’s image problem? Of course not. But it can do something that lobbyists and ambassadors struggle to do: soften that image.
Second, this moment resonates because it represents something increasingly rare: a moment of normalcy. And it is a moment everyone can rejoice in: Left and Right, national-religious and secular, Netanyahu lovers and Netanyahu haters.
The country can unite in projecting national pride onto Avdija without having to agree on government policy or politics. Everyone can rally around an apolitical, hardworking athlete “representing us” abroad, even if he himself does not frame it that way.
Just last week, the country rallied around the Gvili family with the return of the body of St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran Gvili — a moment of unity born of unbearable loss. This is something entirely different. Rallying around Avdija is unity born not of tragedy, but of accomplishment.
And finally, the intensity of the coverage shows something else entirely: a hunger for external legitimacy.
Avdija was selected as one of the top 24 players in the world not only by fans, but by other players and coaches. That matters. It provides reassurance that, despite the impression one might get from social media feeds or boycott campaigns, Israelis are not viewed globally as pariahs to be shunned.
In a climate saturated with online poison, being cheered in a forum like the NBA feels like an answer, however modest, to the narrative that Israelis are universally hated.
For Avdija, it’s just basketball. For a nation traumatized by war, wounded by global reaction, and always hungry for acceptance, it is much more.