Ironi Nes Ziona have added a well-travelled piece to their frontcourt for next season, agreeing a two-year contract with forward Jacob Wiley, ONE reports.
Wiley, 31, arrives having just finished a stint with Santeros de Aguada in Puerto Rico's BSN, which he joined in April. ONE has him averaging 12.7 points and 6.1 rebounds there; Eurobasket.com's own tally, covering 27 games this season, puts him at 13.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists and a steal a night.
At 2.03 metres, he gives Nes Ziona a genuine power forward-center option, and it is exactly the kind of size the club has been chasing as it rebuilds its roster for the coming Winner League campaign.
Before Puerto Rico, his most recent full club season came at Rytas Vilnius in Lithuania's top flight — a stint that ended, according to reporting picked up on Wikipedia, when player and club parted by mutual agreement rather than Wiley completing out his deal there.
Rytas was just one stop on an unusually well-stamped passport. Undrafted out of Eastern Washington in 2017, Wiley served a brief NBA apprenticeship with the Brooklyn Nets and their G League affiliate before criss-crossing the game's middle and upper tiers: Germany's MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg, Australia's Adelaide 36ers, Greece's Panathinaikos, Montenegro's Budućnost, Japan's Shiga Lakes, and no fewer than four different Spanish ACB clubs in Gran Canaria, Zaragoza, Real Betis and Granada.
He also holds North Macedonian citizenship, granted in November 2020, and has represented the national team at EuroBasket qualifiers and at the World Cup, where he once produced a 28-point, four-assist night that ranked among the tournament's most efficient individual performances.
Founded in 2005 and playing its home games at the compact, 1,200-seat Lev Hamoshava arena, Nes Ziona remain one of Israeli basketball's notable overachievers. The club's 2021 FIBA Europe Cup title, won on home floor in Tel Aviv, is still the high point of a short history built largely on shrewd recruitment rather than deep pockets.
Financial terms of Wiley's contract were not disclosed, and the move has yet to be confirmed in an official club statement — though Eurobasket.com's transfer tracker independently lists him as a new arrival in Nes Ziona colours, matching ONE's report.
If the fit works as expected, Wiley slots straight into a frontcourt that will need scoring and rebounding depth through a season Nes Ziona will again be judged on both domestically and in Europe.
