Ligat Winner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ligat Winner | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Sport | Basketball |
| Founded | 1954 |
| No. of teams | 10 |
| Country |  Israel |
| Current champions | Maccabi Tel Aviv |
Ligat Ha'al (Hebrew: ליגת העל) (often referred to as the Israeli Premier League or Ligat Winner) is a league competition for Israeli basketball, making it Israel's primary basketball competition.
[edit] Overview
Ligat Winner comprises the top 10 basketball clubs in Israel, and was founded in 1954.
The League itself is most known in Europe because of the success of the Israeli teams in the European cups such as: Euroleague, ULEB Cup and the FIBA's Eurocup (also known as Euro Cup), any of the Undrafted or free agents players from all over Europe and the NBA prefer to play in this league, until the NBA Summer Leagues will be launched.
This League is the 1st Division in Israel, the two teams the will finish the season will sent to the lower Division and the 2nd Division's first 2 teams will replace the in the next season. The 4 teams the will finish the season on the top will compete against each other on the Championship title on the "Final Four".
[edit] Relation with the NBA
during the 1980s and the early 1990s there were many basketball games between the Israeli League stars and some NBA teams such as the Phoenix Suns, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, all of those games were played in Israel
In October 2005, the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv beat the Toronto Raptors 106-104 in an exhibition game that was played in Canada; this was the first victory that an European team has ever won in North America against an NBA team.
During the years this league exported many of it's forigen players to the NBA.
[edit] Titles by team
| Team | Winners | Runners-Up |
|---|---|---|
| Maccabi Tel Aviv | 46 | 4 |
| Hapoel Tel Aviv | 5 | 20 |
| Hapoel Galil-Elyon | 1 | 2 |
| Hapoel Ramat Gan | 0 | 6 |
| Hapoel Jerusalem | 0 | 5 |
 Ligat Winner 2006-7
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Ironi Nahariya | Ironi Ramat Gan | Maccabi Givat Shmuel | Maccabi Rishon LeZion | Maccabi Tel Aviv |
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