Daniel Chazan, the Israeli-American businessman and player agent who bought into Hapoel Haifa's basketball club less than a year ago, is now negotiating the terms of his own exit, ONE reported.
According to the report, Chazan and Hapoel Haifa's management are in talks over a departure agreement, with the 33-year-old set to leave a club he joined in November 2025 as a co-owner holding close to a 50 percent stake.
It is a strikingly similar pattern to how Chazan arrived at Haifa in the first place. He had held an equivalent co-ownership role at Ironi Nahariya, another National League club, but walked out after a dispute over foreign-player recruitment — Chazan says his agreement gave him sole authority over signing overseas players within an annual budget of $400,000, and that Nahariya breached it by releasing and signing players without his approval.
When he moved to Haifa, Chazan brought a marquee piece of business with him: guard Ryan Turell, the Yeshiva University alumnus who built his reputation in the United States as a trailblazing Orthodox Jewish professional player before continuing his career in Israel. ONE reports Turell, too, is now expected to leave Hapoel Haifa.
Chazan's arrival at Haifa was itself part of a wider reshuffling of the club's ownership. Hapoel Haifa dropped out of the top-flight Premier League and now play in the second-tier National League, and the club has changed hands again since Chazan signed on — in January, 20-year-old Adir Sabag acquired an 80 percent stake in the club's management company, backed by the Nasdaq-listed defence-tech firm VisionWave Holdings, a deal that drew heavy scrutiny in the Israeli press over Sabag's background and the source of the funding.
Neither Chazan nor the club has commented publicly on the departure terms, and no financial details of the exit have been disclosed.
For a club that promised an ambitious rebuild after relegation, the churn at ownership level — three ownership configurations inside a single year — threatens to overshadow whatever is happening on the court as Hapoel Haifa aim for an immediate return to the top flight.
