{"id":502380,"date":"2018-08-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/wilbekin-i-always-wanted-to-play-for-maccabi\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T10:18:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T07:18:28","slug":"wilbekin-i-always-wanted-to-play-for-maccabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wilbekin-i-always-wanted-to-play-for-maccabi\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilbekin: I always wanted to play for Maccabi"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"responsive-video-container\" style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mL_l6SPLNb0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"direction: ltr;\">\n<div> \t\t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Scottie Wilbekin, the new guard of Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv landed in Israel after a long trip that has started in New Jersey. &#8220;Hello to all Maccabi Fans, I&#8217;m happy to be here. It&#8217;s been a long flight but I&#8217;m here now&#8221; Wilbekin told Maccabi&#8217;s official website right after he landed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I have always loved Maccabi and wanted to play for the club, ever since I played my first EuroLeague game here&#8221;, said <strong>Scottie Wilbekin<\/strong>. &#8220;I was very impressed by the atmosphere and the fans and the overall energy in the building. I told myself that I can see myself playing here one day, and I didn&#8217;t tell anybody that, but to have this opportunity this summer was a very good opportunity for me to be a part of a club with such history and heritage so I had to come&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;There&#8217;s always pressure in basketball, you just see it in a different way&#8221;, Scottie said about the expectations. &#8220;You have to adjust to the pressure and deal with it, it&#8217;s a part of the game it&#8217;s a part of playing basketball, that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re here. David Blatt told me a lot he really loves the city and the country. I&#8217;ve heard stories from his time coaching here and it looks like it was a good time&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I came to do what I can so that we could win, that&#8217;s what everybody wants&#8221; the guard added, &#8220;My goal is to improve every year, I improved last year and worked really hard during the summer, harder than any summer so that I can reach my goal and be better than I was last year&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I hope that I can be the best as possible for Maccabi, we have a long year ahead of us and we&#8217;ll see how it&#8217;ll go&#8221; Wilbekin summarized and also emphasized &#8220;Maccabi definitely has a good chance in the EuroLeague we have a talented roster it all depends on our chemistry as a team and that we will make each other better&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Scottie Wilbekin was the first to land today (Tuesday) in Israel, later on John-Di, Tyus, Angelo Caloiaro and Kendrick Ray were scheduled to arrive.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After landing in Israel the EuroCup champ said: &#8220;This is an excellent opportunity for me, I had to come&#8221;. Regarding the EuroLeague: &#8220;My goal is to improve every year, we have a very talented roster&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":502378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-502380","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\/502380","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=502380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502382,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502380\/revisions\/502382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502380"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=502380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}