Hapoel Holon opened its Israeli league campaign late Sunday night against Hapoel Jerusalem at the Toto Arena, with Shahar Amir returning to a club he considers a second home after the best season of his professional career.
The 27-year-old guard enjoyed a breakout 2025/26 campaign with Hapoel Galil Elyon, averaging 12.8 points per game while hitting 2.3 three-pointers per contest at an impressive 42.2% clip. His shooting helped establish him as one of the league’s most dependable Israeli perimeter threats, while his contributions played an important role in Galil Elyon’s fight to remain in the top division.
The season was also marked by profound loss. The death of teammate Raz Adam in a car accident on May 20 left the team reeling, forcing Amir and his teammates to navigate unimaginable grief while continuing to compete.
Now, Amir is back in Holon for his third stint with the club, bringing greater confidence and a desire to build on his progress.
“It’s really great, I’m excited to be back,” Amir told The Jerusalem Post. “It already feels very much like home. I’m really happy to be here. I’m happy to be back in the center of the country, living in my home in Tel Aviv with my new wife. It’s great to be back at this club, this arena, with these fans and this entire organization.”
Shahar Amir celebrates marriage ahead of new basketball season
Amir married over the summer and enjoyed a honeymoon before turning his attention to the new season.
“It was an amazing experience, a perfect wedding, exactly as we imagined it,” he said. “It was a summer full of celebrations, with the wedding and the honeymoon, while also training and doing everything else. It was really perfect. A lot of energy.”
On the court, Amir hopes to bring the aggressive style he displayed in the Galil to his new-old team.
“My personal goal is really to have a bigger impact and bring the style of play I had in the Galil here to Hapoel Holon,” he said. “But the team goals are really what drive us. We want to be a team that fights, bites and is aggressive, and a team that will make the Holon fans proud.”
Holon enters the season under head coach Predrag Krunic, whose emphasis on intensity and defense has already made a positive impression on Amir.
“We’ve only been together for a little over a month since the season started and right now I’m really, really enjoying it,” he said. “He brings something different, something I haven’t seen before. I like the intensity and the emphasis on defense, and I think the players they brought to the team fit his style of play very well.”
Amir praises new teammate Adama Sanogo's talent, character
New teammate Adama Sanogo has also impressed Amir, both professionally and personally.
“He’s an amazing person. It’s really fun being around him. He’s always very positive and smiling,” Amir said. “Professionally, he’s simply a star. He’s incredibly talented, has very, very good hands and moves extremely well for someone his size. He’s competitive, he wants to win, he wants the ball. It’s simply fun to play with him.”
Holon has also added Daniel Ravitz as its new professional director, and Amir believes his experience will help the club pursue its goals.
“He’s truly a very high-level professional,” Amir said. “I’m sure a professional like Daniel Ravitz will help us a lot in achieving our goals.”
For Amir, much of his own progress has come through years of work on his shooting. He emerged last season as one of the league’s most effective Israeli perimeter players, but the ability to consistently knock down shots has taken countless hours of practice.
That dedication helped produce one of Galil Elyon’s biggest moments last season. With 2.9 seconds remaining against Hapoel Tel Aviv in Kfar Blum, Amir intercepted the ball in the backcourt and raced down the floor before finishing with a layup for a dramatic victory.
“I understood what a win over a big team like Hapoel Tel Aviv would mean, what it would do for the people in the Galil, and what it would mean for us in terms of the standings,” he said. “So that instinctive read of the situation, the steal and the layup, I really attribute that to how sharp I was in that particular situation.”
For all his individual success, the defining experience of Amir’s season was the loss of Adam, whose death left Galil Elyon’s players and staff struggling to comprehend what had happened.
“First of all, I don’t know how you can deal with it,” Amir said. “I think I’m still dealing with it. It’s something you can’t see coming, and you don’t know how to process it. The way it happened, that sudden death, it just catches you completely unprepared. The team evening when we were all together, it was like a movie.”
The players leaned on one another as they tried to process their grief. Basketball provided some structure and allowed them to remain together, but the loss never disappeared.
“We dealt with it as a team, which I assume somehow helped us get back into a routine, continue practicing and be together all day,” Amir said. “But it’s something that stayed with us until the end of the season and will stay with us for the rest of our lives.”
Galil Elyon ultimately avoided relegation, and Amir believes the tragedy gave the team an additional source of motivation during its fight to remain in the top division.
“We had a bad season as a team, and ultimately we avoided relegation at the end of the season,” he said. “But because of what happened with Raz, we felt an even greater drive to make it happen. We were very, very committed throughout the season, but when it happened... in a way we fell apart. We lost all our energy.
“We were already ‘fed up,’ and then very quickly, very consciously, that changed into a desire to win and a desire to do it for him. You can’t help but feel that Raz is with us.”
Amir reflects on team’s resilience following Raz Adam’s death
Amir struggled to explain the strength that carried the team through its final games.
“I don’t know, call it mystical, we simply had some other kind of strength when we went into games with him and maybe that was ultimately what kept us in the league,” he said.
Amir’s connection with Holon stretches back several seasons. He first played for the club in 2022/23, was named its Most Improved Player the following season and returned toward the end of the 2024/25 campaign after a difficult period with Galil Elyon.
His latest return follows a season in which he demonstrated just how much he could contribute.
“Holon is a club that I really, really love. My time here was a period I really enjoyed,” he said. “Even when I left, I told them in the conversation when we said goodbye that I would leave, improve and come back.”
That promise has now come full circle.
“So I’m happy that’s what actually happened. I really, really love the club. I love the team they’ve built here, and I really love the fans. So it’s always great to come back. It really feels like a second home to me.”
Despite his development, Amir has yet to make his senior Israel national team debut, a milestone he hopes to reach soon.
“Very, very much,” he said when asked how badly he wants to play for the national team. “I think the Israel national team is a goal that every Israeli player dreams of reaching. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to experience it yet, and I really hope it happens as soon as possible. I’ll do whatever I need to do to show that I deserve a place there.”
Amir reflects on European title win alongside Deni Avdija, Yam Madar
Amir already has international experience, having helped Israel win the European under-20 championship on home soil in 2019 alongside future NBA All-Star Deni Avdija and current Maccabi Tel Aviv guard Yam Madar.
Avdija’s rise has been particularly striking for someone who shared a locker room with him as a teenager.
“Deni was always exceptional, but reaching the level of an All-Star... even when I see Deni as an All-Star, it doesn’t register, because it’s beyond anything you could imagine,” Amir said. “What he’s doing is truly unbelievable, and it’s simply fun to watch him flourish, succeed and improve every season.”
Away from basketball, Amir remains deeply attached to his hometown of Eilat, where he was born and where his family and friends still live.
“I really, really love the city,” he said. “I try to get there as much as possible during the year. Over the past two years, it was very difficult to get there from the Galil, but this year we’ll have a visit there in the league, and I also hope I’ll get to go there outside of basketball.”
As he begins another season in Holon, Amir’s ambitions are straightforward: continue improving, become a more influential player, and fulfill his potential.
“My biggest dream for my career is simply to continue creating the upward trajectory that I’m on,” he said. “Every season, I really want to continue that upward trajectory, improve, and fulfill my potential. In life, simply to enjoy the little things and be happy.”
After a season of career-best performances, personal milestones and devastating loss, Amir returns to Holon ready to take the next step – carrying the lessons of the past year with him while looking ahead to what he can accomplish.
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