NBA veteran Patrick Beverley made headlines when he announced last month that he will be signing with Hapoel Tel Aviv, returning to European basketball after 12 years.
In “The Pat Bev Podcast with Rone,” Beverley spoke about his decision to join the Israeli basketball squad despite rising safety concerns, given the ongoing conflict in the region.
“Safety is important. If a bomb goes off, I’m gone. But most of our EuroCup games are in Bulgaria,” he said.
According to Patrick Beverley, Hapoel Tel Aviv will be playing their EuroCup home games at Samokov Arena in Samokov, Bulgaria, so there was “no cause for concern.”
“I haven’t got knowledge of any unsafe places in Tel Aviv now. My old teammate told me that in every apartment, there is a bomb room, and he used it to hang up clothes. He was there three or four months last season, and nothing happened,” Beverley continued.
He also dismissed some of the negative talk about Israel, the current situation there, as well as the comments about him taking “blood money.”
“There were comments I took blood money, this and that, and I want people to know that my decision is always based on basketball,” Beverley said. “I got family members and homies that die in Chicago every single day that no one speaks about, but when I make a decision to go play basketball, everyone now is like the smartest expert of what’s going on in the world. It’s the funniest thing to me. I’m talking to an American who played there; he says it’s paradise. He went to the beach every single day, six hours a day, and had no bad experience.”
Patrick Beverley begins training camp
Patrick Beverley headed to Bulgaria on August 10 to join his Hapoel Tel Aviv teammates on a training camp. The team will then resume their preparations for the upcoming season in Belgrade, Serbia after a short stop in Tel Aviv. The training camp will end on August 19.
The veteran guard had signed a two-year, $4-million deal with the Israeli Basketball Premier League last month to play with Hapoel. The deal included additional benefits where the club will willingly sell his merchandise and promote his podcast.
The veteran guard looks forward to a more pivotal role in his new Israeli-backed team, but he has not dismissed the thought of returning to the United States and returning to the NBA.
For more NBA content:
Follow me on X at @ErnestLeo, and follow us at @HardwoodHeroics. You can also reach out to Ernest Hernandez via email at [email protected]. To read more of our articles and keep up to date on the latest NBA news, click here!
Ernest also handles a YouTube account called Sports On Air with over 102 thousand subscribers. The channel contains interviews predominantly from the Philippine Basketball Association. They can be reached at [email protected].
