On the Map
As the Middle East was still reeling from the 1972 Olympic massacre at Munich, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv, the Israeli basketball team Maccabi won the 1977 European Championships, against all odds. Moments after this highly charged and historic win, Israeli-American basketball hero Tal Brody became an indelible part of a young country’s history when he famously said, “Israel is ON THE MAP, not just in sport, but in everything.” Told through the eyes of six American athletes who joined Maccabi and helped it defeat top teams from Spain, Italy, and the Soviet Union, the film features interviews with basketball icon Bill Walton (who had a unique personal connection to Brody) and former NBA Commissioner David Stern. Through the of lens of sports, On the Map presents a much broader story of how one underdog team captured the heart of a nation amid domestic turmoil and the global machinations of the Cold War.
