Israel Basketball

Maccabi "Elite" Tel Aviv (Hebrew: מכבי תל-אביב) is a basketball team based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It is part of the Maccabi Tel Aviv sports club, and their main sponsors since 1969 have been the Elite confections company, so Maccabi also carries its name.

The club dominates Israeli basketball, collecting 45 national championship titles (including 23 in a row between 1970 and 1992) and 35 national cups. Maccabi is also among Europe's best basketball teams, having won the European cup 5 times since 1977, and finishing second 6 other times.

Although within Israel there are many fan communities behind Hapoel Tel Aviv, Hapoel Jerusalem, Bnei HaSharon, Hapoel Galil Elyon and several others, Maccabi Tel Aviv's is by far the largest, and except for a few hard-core fans of other clubs, almost every Israeli identifies with Maccabi during international competition as representing them. The club became something like second national team, and much more successful than the official one.