With the new Israeli basketball season bearing down and a facilities row still simmering from last year, league management chairman Ari Steinberg used a sit-down interview on ONE's "Today's Conversation" program to draw a hard line: clubs that cannot meet the top flight's arena standards simply will not be allowed to compete in it.
"A team unworthy of the top league won't be here. We're determined," Steinberg said, making clear the management intends to enforce facility requirements strictly rather than grant the exemptions that have periodically let under-equipped clubs limp through a season.
Steinberg, who has chaired the Israeli Basketball Super League's management board since 2023, used the same interview to address a more immediate crisis: a threat by top-flight referees that they may refuse to open the season at all.
As ONE reported separately, referees' representatives sent an urgent letter warning that a wave of personal lawsuits against officials over on-court decisions has become untenable, demanding legal protection and financial cover from the league and the basketball federation. One case cited involves a defamation suit filed by a Hapoel Tel Aviv fan against the officials who worked last season's playoff final.
Steinberg dismissed the referees' ultimatum as overblown. "It's not serious," he said of the threat not to open the season, likening a personal lawsuit over a refereeing call to suing a judge for handing down a verdict.
Asked about Hapoel Tel Aviv's habit of voting against management proposals at board level, Steinberg did not deny the friction. "We don't see eye to eye on everything," he said, a rare on-record acknowledgement of the rift between the league office and one of its flagship clubs.
On the sensitive question of foreign players gaining Israeli citizenship to count as locals on club rosters, Steinberg said he backs a balanced policy but pushed back on the idea that naturalisations are distorting competition, rejecting characterisations of the practice as having an "artificial" impact on the league.
He also confirmed a tightening of the rules governing player recruitment: clubs are now barred outright from approaching players who remain under contract elsewhere, with breaches carrying a fine of NIS 350,000 — a sharp deterrent aimed at curbing the tampering disputes that have flared between rival clubs in recent seasons.
Steinberg closed on a more hopeful note, saying a return of Israeli clubs to regular European competition would be the surest way to reignite fan interest in the domestic league, which has operated for two seasons under security-related restrictions on venues and crowds.
Taken together, the interview reads as a chairman trying to project control over a league facing pressure on several fronts at once — from officiating to club finances to the naturalisation debate — heading into a season still short of a start date.
