Kadir’s 40 points spark Israelis over Foreigners

Win comes in second straight year in the BSL’s All-Star game; little defense played until final minutes.

By ALLON SINAI
Richard Hendrix 370 (photo credit: asaf kliger)
Richard Hendrix 370
(photo credit: asaf kliger)
The Israelis defeated the Foreigners for a second straight year in the BSL’s All-Star game on Thursday, winning 113-109 in Ashkelon behind 40 points from MVP Elishay Kadir.
As is usually the case in such exhibition affairs, little defense was played by either team until the final minutes of the encounter.
A Sylven Landesberg dunk tied the score at 105-105 with three minutes to play and an alley-oop finished off by Lior Eliyahu gave the Israelis the edge (111-109) with 40 seconds remaining.
Ashkelon’s Dwayne Mitchell had a chance to put the Foreigners back in front, but he missed his three-point attempt and Eliyahu clinched the win for the locals with another dunk in the dying seconds.
“It was really fun to play with all the Israelis and I’m happy we won again,” said Kadir, who also had 13 rebounds to go with his 40 points, shooting 18- of-21 from the field.
Landesberg and Eliyahu added 21 and 20 points, respectively, while Marco Killingsworth led the Foreigners with 20 points.
With all due respect to the game itself, the highlight of the evening was provided by Bnei Hasharon’s Roei Buchbinder.
The 25-year-old has scored just 1.3 points in 7.3 minutes per game in the BSL this season, but he stole the show on Thursday with his winning-performance in the dunk contest.
Buchbinder faced Maccabi Rishon Lezion’s Brandon Bowman in the final and clinched the title with a perfect score of 30 after leaping over the car of Bnei Hasharon assistant coach Zufer Avdija.
“This is my first year in Israel since graduating from college and I came here to win,” said Buchbinder. “A lot of people have never heard of me and I hope this helps me get exposure.”
The Three-Point contest was won by Ironi Ashkelon’s Amit Simhon, who scored 18 points in the first round before beating Hapoel Holon’s Ron Lewis 13-10 in the final.