Israeli sporting prowess, says Tal Brody, has come a long way since the 1960s era of basketball played in a small open-air stadium in Tel Aviv. And the improvement has many wider implications. At the official Independence Day ceremony held every year on Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl, 12 Israelis light torches. This year the torch-lighters included some of the country's best-known athletes, like Olympic silver medalist judoka Yael Arad and soccer idol Eli Ohana. And Tal Brody, the U.S.-born basketball star who helped take Maccabi Tel Aviv from obscurity to its first European championship in 1977, becoming a national icon in the process. Brody uttered one of the best-known phrases in Israel's sporting history when, elated after an upset victory over powerful CSKA Moscow, he shouted at the TV camera, in heavily American-accented Hebrew, "We're on the map, and we're staying on the map!"

Tal Brody: It's been a long process, and I've been lucky enough to be around to see the whole thing. I came to Israel for the 7th Maccabiah games, in 1965. Maccabi Tel Aviv, which had never gotten past the first round in European championships, challenged me to come to Israel. I accepted. In my first year, 1966-7, the team got past the first round, and the second, and the third. That season revolutionized basketball in this country. For the first time, the prime minister came to the games, the chief of staff came, Knesset members. The hardest thing in Israel that year was getting a basketball ticket.