Hapoel Jerusalem always seems to know how to raise its level of play when there is something on the line. Cup, championship, big game, high stakes, you name it – the Reds always come ready to play.
Whether it’s at home or on the road, in the Israeli league or in Europe, Yonatan Alon’s players know how to turn it on, and that’s exactly what they did this past week against Hapoel Tel Aviv in knocking off Dimitrios Itoudis and his band of merry men 92-77 while also overwhelming Slask Wroclaw 115-72 in EuroCup play.
Jerusalem just knows how to win those games that they have to, and one of the reasons is because of their strong guard play, thanks to Jared Harper, Cassius Winston, and, without a doubt, one Khadeen “Dino” Carrington.
Carrington is a team leader on and off the court
The naturalized Israeli is in the midst of this third season with the capital city Reds and has been nothing less than a consummate professional day in and day out, and has been one of the leaders of the team both on and off the court.
Carrington arrived in Jerusalem back in 2022 and has helped the club win a pair of Israel State Cups, to go along with two Winner League Cups as well as a Super Cup earlier this season. The 30-year-old Brooklyn, New York, native knows how to bring it and when to bring it in the big games, just as he did when he was part of the Reds squad that evened up the 2024/25 championship series at one game apiece, a series that never came to an end due to the war with Iran.
But Carrington was back in Israel soon thereafter, this time as a married man, representing the blue-and-white at the 2025 Eurobasket tournament that saw Israel make it to the knockout rounds, where it fell to Greece.
The guard has honed his trade since his days in college at Seton Hall and during his stops in Montenegro, Spain, France, Belgium, and Germany. But his career really began to flourish under then-Jerusalem coach Aleksandar Dzikic in the 2022/23 campaign that saw the team make it all the way to the Basketball Champions League finals, coming up just short against Bonn in the championship game.
Carrington came into the Hapoel Tel Aviv game with a chip on his shoulder after there had been so much talk about him being a naturalized Israeli, both by Itoudis as well as criticism levied by Tel Aviv team owner Ofer Yannay, which he later apologized for.
However, as they say, let sleeping dogs lie, and they did not, as Carrington knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it, as he earned the game’s MVP award with 20 points, five rebounds, and four assists.
“Great game, great game, top to bottom,” Carrington exclaimed after the victory. “I feel like everybody, from myself, Jared Harper, the starting five, everybody from the bench came in ready. That’s what we need from everyone. Everybody played a part today. I’m proud of the team, I’m proud of the coaches and staff.”
Over the past month, Jerusalem has not played its best league basketball and suffered losses to Bnei Herzliya and Hapoel HaEmek, while even during wins, it hasn’t played its best ball. Alon hadn’t been happy with the recent play of his charges and made that clear in the various press conferences that he had conducted. So much so that he spoke to Carrington individually.
“About a week or two ago, the coach challenged me,” the guard revealed. “He brought me to his office and said I’m not playing hard. So the game, that’s my response. It was a challenge. I take every game personally, but tonight I didn’t want to settle for anything. Like you said, that was my mindset coming into the game. I didn’t want to shoot. I wanted to go to the rim. If they can stop me, they can stop me. If I get fouled, I get fouled. They block it, they block it, but I’m going every time. That was my mindset from the jump ball.
“I feel like we have such a great team. I feel like sometimes we get a little lazy and complacent. That’s on us. That’s not on the coaching staff. That’s not on anyone else. I think we know how good we are, so sometimes we can go into these games and kind of act lackadaisical. That’s what I’ll blame those losses on. Obviously, a game like this, you don’t have to. The coach don’t even have to come in and talk. We just roll the ball out and we’re ready to play.”
Jerusalem knows how to play against the “big teams” but has trouble with those clubs that are not from Tel Aviv, so it seems. Carrington wants to make sure that going forward, each game is treated identically and that the team plays their best basketball and not second-rate, which then could end up in a loss, as they have four thus far.
“I think that’s the next step in our journey, just learning how to play against these other teams. Everybody’s going to give us their best punch, so we’ve got to be aware of that.”
Itoudis has mentioned on more than one occasion that it’s not exactly fair that an imported player is also a naturalized Israeli, and that is a benefit to Jerusalem that his team does not have. Carrington claims that this does not bother him, although many believe that this was the impetus for his marvelous performance. He says that he’s concentrating on what he does best, which is playing the game of basketball.
“I don’t really try to pay too much attention to what those guys say. Obviously, I don’t even have Twitter. I’m on TikTok sometimes. I don’t have Instagram, so I don’t even see half the stuff. People come and tell me what they say there, but I don’t know. I don’t really pay attention to much. I come into work every day. I work hard. I stay to myself. I don’t worry about what other guys are doing, what other teams are doing. I’m a grown man with a baby on the way and a wife. I don’t have time to really focus on what those guys are talking about.”
With the win over Hapoel Tel Aviv, a team that has been tearing up the Euroleague this season, Carrington believes that this win was a statement that Jerusalem is here and in the hunt for what it was so close to capturing last year.
“Of course. I feel like we have the team to do it. I feel like we had a great team last year. Obviously, we lost a couple great guys from our team, but we also added a few great guys. I think if we stay steady and we come out to play every night how we played these last two or three games, I feel like we can only beat ourselves. That’s something that we have to realize. Me being one of the oldest on the team, that’s something I’ve got to come out and show every day in practice and the game. So, it’s not really any excuses.”
As for the top seed, Jerusalem sits in fifth place with an 8-4 record, while Hapoel Tel Aviv and Maccabi Tel Aviv are both 10-1 so far this campaign. With four losses already, it’s highly unlikely that Jerusalem will finish in first place and have home-court advantage throughout the Israeli league postseason. But that is far, far away right now, Carrington explained.
“It’s not our top priority right now. I think at the end of the day, we have a goal. We want to put ourselves in the best position possible. Obviously, we dug ourselves a little hole, but we have to take it game by game, day by day. At the end of the day, we have an end goal in sight; that’s something that we have to kind of keep our eye on, but not overstep anything.”
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