Omri Casspi

On June 25, 2009, the Sacramento Kings called Omri Casspi's name with the 23rd pick of the NBA Draft, and a country that had sent soldiers, scientists and singers abroad finally had a basketball player in the world's best league. Casspi was the first Israeli to play in the NBA, and he lasted a full decade there — 588 games across eight franchises — before closing his career where it began, at Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. June 22, 1988

Career Highlights:
Casspi came up through the Maccabi Tel Aviv system, debuting for the senior side as a teenager in 2005-06 and winning the Israeli championship in 2006 and 2009, with a season on loan at Hapoel Galil Elyon in between. The Israeli league named him its Sixth Man of the Year in 2008, the season before he left for California.

In Sacramento the rookie forward was picked for the All-Star Weekend Rookie Challenge, and Israeli fans began showing up in NBA arenas with flags whenever the Kings were in town. Casspi wore number 18 — the numerical value of "chai," the Hebrew word for life. When a 2011 trade sent him to Cleveland, the number belonged to Anthony Parker, himself a former Maccabi Tel Aviv player, so Casspi doubled it and wore 36.

His NBA decade ran through Sacramento (twice), Cleveland, Houston, New Orleans, Minnesota, Golden State and Memphis: 7.9 points and 4.0 rebounds per game for his career, with a .368 mark from three-point range. His best night came on December 28, 2015, back in a Kings uniform: 36 points against Golden State with nine three-pointers, tying Mike Bibby's franchise record. There was heartbreak in the league too. The Warriors waived him just before the 2018 playoffs — coach Steve Kerr called the conversation "difficult" and said plainly, "We love Omri" — yet the team still sent him a championship ring that summer. Entering 2018-19 he was the longest-tenured active NBA player never to have appeared in a playoff game.

Casspi captained Israel at EuroBasket 2015 and was one of seven athletes chosen to light the torch at the opening ceremony of the 2017 Maccabiah Games. Back at Maccabi Tel Aviv from 2019, he added two more Israeli championships (2020, 2021) and a second State Cup before retiring on July 18, 2021, fifteen years after his professional debut. He then swapped the locker room for the boardroom, launching Sheva, a fifty-million-dollar venture capital fund, in 2022 — he had already been an early investor in companies like DocuSign during his playing days. The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame announced him as a member of its class of 2026.

Origin:
Holon, Israel

Physical description:
6'9", 225 pounds