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After turning heads as the star of Yeshiva University’s basketball team,Ryan Turell was drafted into the NBA G League this week.
By United with Israel Staff
Orthodox basketball star Ryan Turell has gone on record professing a two-track dream: to play in the NBA and to make aliyah to Israel.
This week, he took a major step toward accomplishing one of those goals. Turell was drafted into the NBA’s G League, which is the organization’s minor league division.
For many aspiring NBA players, the G League is the first stop on the way to the big time. Being drafted means Turell is eligible to replace an NBA player on the injured list, and could even be called up to sub in for a lackluster performer.
Turell was drafted by the Detroit Pistons’ G League affiliate, the Motor City Cruise.
While trailblazing point guard Tamir Goodman will always be the original “Jewish Jordan,” Turell emerged during the past few years as the world’s next great Orthodox Jewish basketball player.
Turell led his Yeshiva University team to a 50-game winning streak, which is the second longest streak in college basketball.
The 6’7″ forward from Los Angeles has also expressed a desire to make aliyah, a step through which he would fulfill the “mitzvah” according to Jewish ritual law of living in the Land of Israel.
“My dream has always been to play professional basketball in Israel,” Turell told Israel Today earlier in the year. “I remember visiting Israel at the age of 9 and since then I have a special connection to it. All this time, I [worked] to play in the Israeli league.”
While there have been dozens of Jewish players in the NBA, including a few Israelis, none of them was Sabbath-observant because games are played and teams work and travel on Friday evening and Saturday, during Shabbat.
Turell could break that barrier and become the first Shabbat-observant NBA player, carrying on the tradition of kippah-wearing ballers started by Goodman.
“A lot of kids can now be proud Jewish basketball players,” Goodman told the LA Times in an interview last year, “but back then, I was just a curiosity.”
“We’re serious. Jews can play basketball,” Turell said in the Times piece. “I made a decision to really be a part of something special, to be a Jewish hero and to create the dream — a basketball culture for Jews.”
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