One can learn a lot when teaching sixth graders how to play basketball. Case in point: My daughter kept getting caught in high screens on defense. It took a few possessions to realize she didn’t have to fight over every pick; she could just drop back, play deeper, and invite her opponent to shoot a low-percentage jumper. When she made that small adjustment, her opponent took the bait. There were fewer drives, and, more importantly, fewer easy buckets.
After the game, my wife gave her a piece of advice that transcends basketball: When things change, we change.
Speaking of basketball.
When the NBA turned All-Star Weekend into a made-for-television tournament (USA vs. The World), it handed us more than a rebrand for a tired exhibition—it handed us a mirror. On that court in Los Angeles, under the lights, Deni Avdija became the first Israeli to play in the All-Star Game. He checked in for Team World, played within the flow, made good decisions, and looked like he belonged.
Yet the most revealing plays weren’t on the court, they were courtside; Spike Lee in a keffiyeh-patterned top, and old friend Kyrie Irving in a “PRESS” shirt aligned with Gaza solidarity messaging. (Even LeBron James got caught in the crossfire; more on that shortly.)
Listen, it’s a free country; they are entitled to wear what they want. But timing matters. None of it was accidental, and none of it was random. This wasn’t political speech in a vacuum; it was symbolic sabotage staged at the precise moment an Israeli athlete stepped into the spotlight. And it was a reminder that symbolism at an event like this is never neutral—the cameras guarantee it becomes part of the narrative.
Even sticking to the facts didn’t help. Avdija, 25, earned his selection and played just fine, and LeBron, when asked about Avdija and Israel, offered generic praise and said he hoped to visit someday. That most banal display of common decency sparked backlash. It’s telling, and beyond unsurprising, that there was a coordinated social media campaign to castigate a superstar for expressing the kind of kindness that used to pass for unremarkable. After all, we’ve now reached the point where polite goodwill toward Jews is treated as a PR crisis.
Welcome to the brave new world where Jewish excellence is treated as provocation, and Jewish normalcy as something that must be interrogated. The burden of justification always seems to land on us.
And this is exactly how contemporary antisemitism often works: the conversation moved from whether Avdija could play to whether he should be celebrated at all. After all, kindness toward Jews is controversial; contempt is cool.
While the league marketed the revitalization of a moribund All-Star model and hyped up its international stars, the subtext mattered more. An Israeli finally stood on the All-Star stage, and the haters arrived on cue. The message was familiar: celebrate quietly, Jews, if at all. The real conversation was happening over your shoulder.
When things change, we must also change.
The arena has changed. The contest over Jewish legitimacy no longer happens just in faculty lounges or Wikipedia footnotes. It happens under lights, on 5K cameras, and on celebrity row, where the worst of us create the narratives that inevitably, inexorably, lead to the Jews being the bad guys.
It’s high time that we stop assuming that better explanations alone will fix a culture optimized for optics; a museum docent or Holocaust awareness campaign cannot outpace a courtside camera, a celebrity Instagram post, or a viral clip stripped of context. We have to stop whispering gratitude for inclusion and start demanding normalcy. We must admit that we are no longer fighting ignorance; we’re fighting a culture that prefers the aesthetics of victimhood over the complexity of Jewish reality.
We must change our posture. That means offense, not apology. Say what happened plainly: an Israeli became an NBA All-Star; high-profile figures used the moment to foreground anti-Israel symbolism; a superstar’s neutral compliment toward Israel was treated as a scandal. All three are true.
It also means insisting on the facts. Avdija earned his time in the spotlight and looked like he belonged. That’s the entire story; we must refuse the script that says Jewish visibility must always arrive with a disclaimer. The culture may prefer ambiguity when it comes to Jews, but if our visibility makes some people uncomfortable, that discomfort isn’t our problem to solve.
And if the All-Star Weekend was a mirror, look closely. In it is a 25-year-old from Beit Zera who made history. In it are cultural signals that Jewish success still makes some people reach for reframing devices. And in it are the rest of us deciding how we respond.
Bottom line? He earned it. He belonged there. And if that makes some people uncomfortable? Good. I don’t care.
After all, when things change, we change.
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