{"id":31304,"date":"2011-08-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/maccabis-first-practice-of-2011-2012\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:39:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:39:26","slug":"maccabis-first-practice-of-2011-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/maccabis-first-practice-of-2011-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Maccabi\u2019s First Practice of 2011 \u2013 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>By Amy Samin<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Training camp officially opened today (Sunday) for Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, with the season\u2019s first practice held in Nokia Arena. Due to the upcoming European Championship, a number of people were not in attendance: five players who are on the Israeli National Team, one player who is on the Serbian National Team, and head coach David Blatt who is the head coach of the Russian National Team.<\/FONT><\/P> <P align=center><IFRAME height=330 src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TXt7O6NyB3U\" frameBorder=0 width=425 allowfullscreen><\/IFRAME><\/P><FONT size=2 face=Arial> <P align=left>Still, it was a great opportunity to check out the moves of some of the new additions to Maccabi: Theo Papaloukas, Jordan Farmar, Shawn James, and Devin Smith. <\/FONT><FONT size=2 face=Arial>They were joined by Sofo Schortsanitis and Richard Hendrix, both of whom have returned for their second season with Maccabi. Rounding out the group were two youth players, Yariv Amiram and Idan Zalmanson, and two players from Maccabi\u2019s farm team Hapoel Yokneam Megiddo, Moti Moscovitch and Thomas Sanders.<\/FONT> <\/P> <P align=center><IMG style=\"WIDTH: 425px; HEIGHT: 283px\" border=1 hspace=0 alt=\"Derrick Sharp\" align=baseline src=\"https:\/\/www.maccabi.co.il\/mtpic\/HK8C9198.jpg\"><BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>But the guy who stole the show was none other than Derrick Sharp, who after 15 seasons playing in the yellow and blue opened this season as an assistant coach alongside Guy Goodes. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like a new job,\u201d said <B>Sharp<\/B>. \u201cThere\u2019s no difference between the other seasons and now. Anyway I didn\u2019t play too much in the last couple of years. It\u2019s always fun to see everyone after the summer \u2013 they\u2019ve come back refreshed and ready to work hard. We need to prepare ourselves for ninety-something games. It\u2019s going to be a mental and professional challenge for everyone.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P> <P align=center><IMG style=\"WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 450px\" border=1 hspace=0 alt=\"Theodoros Papaloukas\" align=baseline src=\"https:\/\/www.maccabi.co.il\/mtpic\/HK8C9238.jpg\"><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>\u201cWe\u2019ve brought some great players. We welcome them; the whole club is very excited. It\u2019s a very interesting and fun time for everyone. Who will be the next Derrick? The media will decide that \u2013 I didn\u2019t start all that.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P> <P align=center><IFRAME height=330 src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iSoIz_NGgSQ\" frameBorder=0 width=425 allowfullscreen><\/IFRAME><\/P> <P align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>\u201cIt was a little bit hard because it\u2019s the first practice, but that\u2019s okay. I\u2019ve been waiting to play at Nokia,\u201d said <B>Papaloukas<\/B> at the end of practice. \u201cThere are new faces here, new teammates, and a new arena for me. It will take some time to learn how everyone thinks and what they want. For now the most important thing is for us to come together as a team and get into shape. Derrick Sharp? It\u2019s part of life that he has become an assistant coach. He was a great player, and I\u2019m sure he will help everyone feel a part of the team and get acclimated.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P> <P align=center><IMG style=\"WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 450px\" border=1 hspace=0 alt=\"Jordan Farmar\" align=baseline src=\"https:\/\/www.maccabi.co.il\/mtpic\/HK8C92365.jpg\"><BR><\/P><FONT size=2 face=Arial><\/FONT> <P><BR><\/P> <P><A href=\"https:\/\/www.samintranslations.com\/\" target=_blank><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><U>www.samintranslations.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> <\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv held its first practice of the 2011 \u2013 2012 season at Nokia Arena, though a number of people were absent.  Sharp: \u201cWe\u2019ve brought some great players.  It\u2019s going to be a mental and professional challenge for everyone.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-31304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496335,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31304\/revisions\/496335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31304"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=31304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}