Mr. Basketball

A first-round draft pick of the Baltimore Bullets in the 1960s, TAL BRODY could have followed his NBA dreams. Instead, he brought basketball to Israel, where the game has flourished ever since.

- Yaron Weitzman

Tal Brody’s voice is hoarse. He’s also just getting over a mild flu—repercussions of flying his 73-year-old body back and forth across the United States to promote a new film.

Still, Brody, who’s talking on the phone from his Tel Aviv home, is in good spirits. He usually is, but that’s especially the case whenever he’s given a chance to talk hoops. Conversations with Brody frequently derail; almost all make their way back to basketball. A question about Israel’s political standing in the early 1980s could end with him talking about a chat he once had with “Billy” Walton or the time Bill Russell announced at an annual NBA All-Star Weekend legends banquet—an event Brody never misses—that his salary was greater than Wilt Chamberlain’s.

But we’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s back up and answer the question you—Young Basketball Fan Unaware of 1970s Geopolitics—are no doubt pondering: Who the hell is Tal Brody?

“He’s the Forrest Gump of Israeli basketball,” says Dani Menkin, an Israeli filmmaker whose new movie, On The Map, documents the ’76-77 Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team and with it, much of Brody’s life. Few know as much about Brody as Menkin, but even that comparison—describing Brody as a Forrest Gump-like character—doesn’t do the man’s life justice.

Forrest Gump witnessed important events. The difference between Forrest and Brody (aside, of course, from one being fictional) is that Brody didn’t just observe history. He altered it.