'Thank God for Deni Avdija': A Jerusalem Market Adopts Its Star

On a Friday morning in January 2026, in the crush of Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda market (the shuk, where the city does its shopping before Shabbat closes everything down), The Press Service of Israel found shoppers willing to stop mid-errand to talk about a basketball player. Deni Avdija, the forward from Kibbutz Beit Zera in northern Israel, had been named the NBA's Western Conference Player of the Week that Monday, and the market had opinions. “He is a great player.” “He's the best NBA player.” “He shoots beautiful three-pointers. The whole defense is on him.” One boy admitted he hardly watches sport but sees Avdija “on the cornflakes box and stuff”.

The numbers behind the affection: Avdija, 25, was averaging 25.6 points, 7.2 rebounds and 7.0 assists a game, had dragged the Portland Trail Blazers into contention for a play-off place for the first time since 2021, and was outpolling LeBron James and Kevin Durant in fan voting for the All-Star Game. Known as “Turbo” for the way he plays, he keeps almost no social media presence and speaks in interviews mainly about his teammates. As one older man in the shuk put it: “Deni Avdija is a great man. He's a mensch.”

The 16-year-old who wanted to look like the posters

Rakefet Arieli, team nutritionist at Maccabi Tel Aviv, remembered him walking into the club's training facility at 16. “I knew that he is very talented and I knew he has very good genes because you see his parents, but he was very… childish,” she told the agency, describing early sessions in which he pointed at pictures of the club's stars and said he wanted to look like them. “At 16-17 years old, body image is important,” she said. “But there was a point when he understood that if he wants to play basketball in the EuroLeague and in Tel Aviv, he needs to take care of his body not just in an aesthetic state of mind but also from an athletic state.” On court, she said, he was dominant from the start, and loud: “He puts his music very loud. You always heard his voice.”

He won the Israeli league title with Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2018, at 17, and again in 2019 and 2020. In 2020 he took both the league's Most Valuable Player award and its Israeli Player of the Year award, the youngest ever to do so, and was drafted ninth overall by the Washington Wizards. At the celebration in Tel Aviv afterwards he told his family and friends: “I'm gonna make you proud. I'm gonna work 100%.”

The week that earned the award

Over the week that won him the conference honour, Avdija averaged 26.8 points, 8.3 rebounds and 9.8 assists, including a 34-point game against the New Orleans Pelicans and back-to-back triple-doubles, the second in a win over the San Antonio Spurs, The Times of Israel reported; the award was announced by the Trail Blazers. In his post-game interview he talked about the group: “This team, this camaraderie, those players, it's just fun to play.”

He made it

The market's prediction held. Avdija was named a Western Conference reserve for the All-Star Game, becoming the first Israeli player ever selected, the NBA announced on 2 February 2026. He was averaging 25.5 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.7 assists across 44 games at that point, one of only three players in the league at 25 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists, alongside Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic. The game was played on 15 February 2026 in Inglewood, California.

The part that is not basketball

Avdija does not play on Yom Kippur and lights Chanukah candles each year. After the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 he told reporters: “There's really more important things than basketball in life. And it's really tough for me, and my mind sometimes isn't there. But I got to keep it professional and do my job, and when I have the chance to stand with Israel, I will.” The shuk hands him that weight cheerfully. “He wants to show the whole world that Israel has much less funding for basketball, we can still make it,” one man said. “He has a lot of responsibility. He'll make it.”

What is still unclear

The market interviews are unattributed beyond a description of the speaker, so there is no way to know how many people were approached or how representative the enthusiasm was. The agency did not speak to Avdija himself, and the report carries no comment from the Trail Blazers or from Israel's basketball association.