"Pini Gershon told me that basketball is a marathon. When you are good, eventually luck catches up with you" | Exclusive
After returning Eilat to the Premier League, Elad Hasin will coach Maccabi Ramat Gan this season. He talks about everything: his beginnings in 7th grade in Jerusalem, the love for basketball that kept him in the sport, the loss of the late Raz Adam, and his warm relationship with Pini Gershon: "In sports, you have to know how to get up. Not everything is stairs that you climb."
Although all the conditions were there for him, Elad Hasin is not a coach who started at the top, but one who was built gradually. At 46, and a moment before he opens his 17th season on the sidelines, the man who will be responsible for Maccabi Ramat Gan this year feels that the developing script of his career is different from what he imagined 21 years ago, when confetti was still flying in the hall in Moscow after Maccabi Tel Aviv's EuroLeague win.
Hasin, who was Pini Gershon's assistant (whose name is mentioned quite a bit in this interview) at the great Maccabi Tel Aviv and Olympiacos, explains:
"In sports, you have to know how to get up. Not everything is stairs that you climb. Few are the people who only go up and up. I had many downs and ups, some my fault and some not. You also need a lot of luck. I wasn't one of the great players of the past, but already at a young age I managed to coach a game in Jerusalem. I was in 7th grade, and I coached children who were a year younger than me in a tournament at the Ein Harim school. Yonatan Alon was my assistant in one of the periods there, even before Hapoel Holon."
And he was the head coach of Hapoel Jerusalem before you. Did it hurt you?
"I am happy for him, he is a friend. I don't know if saying it hurts me is an appropriate definition. I want to be at Hapoel Jerusalem when they feel I am the right person. It's a great place and if it happens - it will happen. I am good where I am today. I had crises, I thought about leaving coaching, but the love pulled me back in."
The Galilee of the center
Before talking about the Premier League, one must return for a moment to the National League - where he coached last season at Ironi Eilat and returned it to the big stage after a light year of 29 wins and one loss. "They told me I was crazy for going down to the National League," says Hasin. "I believe in the path, in seeing the place and its vision. I didn't hesitate."
The natural move would have been for Hasin to continue with Eilat, but the historic season and the experience he went through paled in comparison to the longing for his daughters, who remained in the center. The offer from Maccabi Ramat Gan, a club he knows from the days when he coached the youth team, suited his current situation in life. "The potential to succeed in Ramat Gan is greater than in Eilat. Some of the things I thought needed to be done there were not so accepted," he says, "and this was added to the family, which is the main reason."
You are coming to Ramat Gan after six years of Shmulik Brenner on the sidelines.
"He did a great job, and it is a badge of honor for the club that a coach stays for such a number of years, there is stability and a path here. There are people who look not only at games, but at sports management. I will bring my agenda, what was in other teams. We built a team that fits my philosophy."
The jump of Wolf
This summer, three years have passed since Hasin stood on the sidelines with the youth national team that won the silver medal at the European Championship, when in that squad one could find Danny Wolf and Noam Yaacov. "It's a special story," he details, "Pini, who was the professional manager of the national teams, told me that the goal is to stay in the division. It was not easy to convince Wolf to come, he turned from NO NAME to BIG NAME, from unknown to a big name. I told him he would be the Jewish Nikola Jokic, and that's how I pulled him."
This year Israeli sports lost a player I coached in Ness Ziona, the late Raz Adam.
"It was the most terrible thing I experienced in my career, along with the loss of coaches who are colleagues like Arik Alfasi and the late Lior Lubin. It took me a few days to digest this tragedy. Raz was a player I brought from Hapoel Tel Aviv, and I told him that I see him making the breakthrough with us and becoming one of the leading guards in the country. The loss of Raz is very great for all of basketball. He was a special kid, an excellent player and at the beginning of his peak."
