Israel's Maccabi Tel-Aviv defeated NBA's Toronto Raptors

Israel's Maccabi Tel-Aviv is probably the most dominant basketball team in recent years in Europe and the reigning Euroleague champions for 2005 and 2004. Yesterday, in a preseason game in Toronto, Maccabi came back defeating the Canadian NBA team 105:103 after a close game and a last second fadeaway jumpshot by Maccabi's allstar Anthony Parker. Maccabi's annual budget stands at about $12M while the standard NBA team budget is about $50M, so victory must belong to the ~17,000 fans who rocked the Air Canada stadium yesterday, waving Israeli flags and cheering to every shot made by the Israeli team. The Raptors gave a real fight, leaving all leading players on court most of the game, while trying to overcome a 0:3 balance in their preseason campaign so far.

more coverage of the Israel Maccabi Tel-Aviv campaign on the NBA site