Maccabi Tel Aviv beaten by former coach’s Cavaliers

European champions Maccabi Tel Aviv lost to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers in an international exhibition game Sunday night by 107-80.

The trouncing came at the hands of the Cavaliers’ new head coach David Blatt, who earlier this year had led Maccabi to victory in the Euroleague 2014 championship.

Blatt joined the Cavaliers in June, and Sunday’s game against his former team was his first as head coach of an NBA team.

“The fact that my first game as an NBA head coach, ironically, is against the team that I was so much a part of is almost overwhelming,” Blatt said last week.

Before the game, the Cavaliers’ star player LeBron James told Israeli reporters he had not visited Israel in the past, but “I want to look forward to going there if I get an opportunity to.”

Blatt, a Hebrew-speaking Israeli citizen, also guided Russia to a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics.

The game was not without controversy, as nearly 50 protestors gathered outside Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena ahead of the contest, waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Protest organizer Abbas Hamideh said they were protesting against Blatt following comments he made over the summer in support of Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

“We are here to protest coach Blatt, in particular, for his support of the Israeli terrorist forces and his support for the genocide against the Palestinian people in the gaza strip,” Hamideh told Cleveland daily The Plain Dealer. “So shame on him and shame on the NBA for letting this politics in the game.”

During the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, Blatt said he thought Israel was “justified” in taking action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This war is Israel’s most justified war I can remember in recent years,” Blatt told Israeli business daily Globes in August. “I’m really sorry about what’s happening in Gaza, but there’s no doubt that we had to act there, so that Israel will have quiet there once and for all, and we can live in peace.”

Hamideh, president of the Cleveland chapter of Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, acknowledged Blatt was entitled to his opinion, but asserted that somebody in his position should keep it out of the media.

“If [Blatt] wants to support a political cause on his own, that’s fine,” Hamideh said. “But as a coach, that should not be allowed.”

During the small protest, some stopped to show support for Israel, including a group with Israeli flags draped over their shoulders, who chanted “USA.”

Earlier in the week, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland criticized the planned protest, calling it misguided.

“Once again, this Palestinian group refuses to protest in the right place,” the organizations president, Steve Hoffman, said in a statement. “They should be protesting the terrorist leadership of Hamas that started the war this summer, prolonged the war this summer, and, in doing so, caused the death of its own innocent civilians.

Despite the controversy, the game went on. James started but played only 20 minutes and did not take the court in the second half, finishing with 12 points on 4-of-11 shooting with four rebounds and four assists.

Kyrie Irving led the Cavaliers with 16 points while fellow guard Dion Waiters added 15 points, 12 of them in the third quarter.

Sylvan Landesberg came off the bench to score a game-high 23 points for Maccabi while former Cavalier Jeremy Pargo added 18 points for Tel Aviv.

The Cavaliers continue their pre-season play on Saturday at Rio de Janeiro against James’s former club, the Miami Heat.

AFP and JTA contributed to this report.