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Message: [QUOTE="tcf15, post: 2891285, member: 208"] Yeah, my pick is Sheffer. From 2014: [B][URL="https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2014/07/02/doron-sheffer-uconn-where-are-they-now"]Where are They Now: Former UConn basketball star Doron Sheffer[/URL][/B] [I]Back in the motherland, there was great hope that Sheffer would become the first Israeli in the NBA. He recalls hearing the broadcaster Al McGuire once say in an interview, This young man will be an NBA ballplayer, if he decides to. “ ‘Decides to’ was the key,” says Sheffer. “I didn’t make all the effort.” He showed up at Clippers camp; bristled when he was yelled at by the team’s cantankerous coach, Bill Fitch; and hightailed it home, signing with Maccabi. (Israelis would have to wait until Omri Casspi in 2009 to have a homegrown NBA player.) “[Doron] was a player I thought would play 10 years in the NBA,” says Allen. “He was that talented.” Instead Sheffer was the best player in the Israeli league, leading Maccabi to four straight championships. And then he was gone. At age 28 -- at the peak of his powers, in the middle of a seven-figure contract, against the advice of everyone, including his father -- he quit. “I felt my soul was wanting to spread wings and fly,” he says. “I couldn’t do it with basketball.”[/I] [/QUOTE]