4-minute career in the history of the Euroleague

Israeli Dagan Yivzori has been waiting for his debut in one of the strongest tournaments of the entire continent for a very long time. It finally happened, but his long-awaited presentation ended almost immediately, after just 4 minutes. How is it possible, after all, a famous athlete from Israel did not even have the opportunity to come near the ball? Many people still do not believe that this is what was waiting for Dagan in the Euroleague. He has come a long way to this tournament, trying to show himself as the best basketball player and get into the team of the best athletes.

The debut in the Euroleague is a great opportunity for athletes to show themselves, as well as attract the attention of famous top clubs to their persona. But this is only at first glance. Not everyone and not always manages to show their best abilities and skills. The first match in the Euroleague may be the last one for them. That’s exactly what happened with Dagan Yivzori. No one could have known that this was how his game would end before it even started. He made his debut in the Euroleague approaching the end of his basketball career, but he showed absolutely nothing. Not because he didn’t want to, the athlete just didn’t even have time to do anything. He did enter the history of Euroleague tournaments, but as an athlete whose career path has become one of the shortest.

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Who is Dagan Yivzori?

Yivzori was born in 1985 in Israel. Basketball attracted him very much from childhood, so he signed up for training at a fairly early age. Yivzori tried not to miss a single game that took place at his school and even then showed great results. His coaches praised him and saw great potential in him for the country. During his school years, he changed many clubs, but he knew for sure that he would become one of the most famous basketball players and would definitely take part in the Euroleague tournament. For many years he worked for his dream, taking part in various competitions wherever he could. His parents were proud of him and believed that he would definitely achieve his dream. At that time, no one could have imagined that it was Yivzori who would end up having one of the shortest basketball careers in the Euroleague.

How it all started

Israeli Dagan Yivzori started playing his favourite game – basketball on a professional level back in 2007. In the same year, 2007, he played in the highest league of his country for the first time. Throughout the period of his basketball career, he managed to become a player of 6 Israeli clubs and to achieve quite good results. He became the champion of Israel for the first time back in 2010, and in 2014 he was recognized as the domestic champion of the final series. Dagan was a participant in the European Cup in two different teams, and he played in 21 matches.

In 2015, the basketball player was called up to play for his country’s national team at the European Championship. It was in that tournament that his team easily qualified for 2nd place. Despite this, they lost to Italian basketball players in the 1/8 finals and left the tournament.

Dagan’s wonderful performance in Haifa attracted the attention of a basketball club from Tel Aviv. The club took 5th place in the Euroleague in 2016 and got into the European Cup. Dagan Yivzori took part in all three matches. In the Euroleague, his basketball team played a total of 10 matches, but Dagan was not lucky enough to play in any of them due to an ankle injury that he received during training. Many experts are confident that if it were not for this injury, Yivzori would not have become the record holder for the shortest career in one of the strongest basketball tournaments.

In 2016, he made his Euroleague debut. On the eve of this game, the basketball player just turned 31. In Athens, during the meeting of the Maccabi and Panathinaikos teams, Dagan came out onto the court 4 minutes before the end of the tournament, but by a strange coincidence, he did not even have time to touch the ball before the tournament ended.

After the final whistle, his Euroleague game ended without even starting. The athlete sat down on the bench, but he was not lucky enough to get out. This struck Yivzori so much that for a long time, he could not believe what had happened. After that, he decided that he would never play in any other Euroleague tournament ever again.

During the games in the Maccabi team, Dagan Yivzori won the cup of his country, Israel, twice and after that left the club for good. The athlete continued playing only in the Israeli championship, in total playing 342 matches for 13 tournaments. But Dagan never played outside his own country again. He called time on his career completely in mid-2019. In total, he played 24 matches in the European Cup. This suggests that Dagan was a very good basketball player, there were far weaker basketball players in the Maccabi team. The circumstances of the tournament gave him too little time on the court in the Euroleague.

In the entire history of this tournament, no athlete has ever spent less than 4 seconds on the court. The debut, which the athlete had been waiting for for so long, not only did not give him the result he desired but also became a negative one. The player himself and the entire Maccabi team believe that his participation in the club is already a great achievement for his career. But Dagan was not able to show his best abilities in the Euroleague.

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