Danielle McCray's Blog from Israel

Danielle McCray missed her entire WNBA rookie season while recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee. McCray suffered the injury during a practice last February 4th at Kansas. She finished as the fourth-leading scorer in Jayhawk women’s basketball history with 1,934 career points, and was selected with the No. 7 overall pick in the first round of the 2010 WNBA Draft by the Connecticut Sun.

This past week, McCray returned to the basketball court with a bang, scoring 30 points while leading Hapoel Rishon Le-Zion to a 100-67 win over Elitzur Netanya in Israel. McCray, who earned Eurobasket.com Player of the Week honors for her play, writes about her memorable international debut.

Round 1 in Israel!!!

Finally, back at it again! It’s been about seven months since I’ve been on the hardwood for an official game. After getting injured, it was a long road to recovery. I endured a lot of adversity along the way which, through it all, turned out to not only help me grow as a person but as a basketball player.

It was a blessing to be drafted by the Connecticut Sun even though I was hurt; it was my dream come true. Through the season, I learned a lot from visiting the Sun and watching practice. Although it was very tough to watch from the sideline, and somewhat challenging during the WNBA period, it was a good experience to see players that I played against in college compete against my team. Once the season was over, I knew it was almost my time to get back on the hard wood and be in the mix.

In the meantime, I was staying in shape and rehabbing my knee for my upcoming season overseas. I signed a professional contract with a team in Israel named Hapoel Rishon Le-Zion. It was another huge step in my life to play for a team in another country. I was excited to get another opportunity to play as fast as I did. Due to my injury, I was worried in the beginning of the process about finding a team overseas. But again, I was blessed to find a coach that wanted me and believed in my ability to help their team.

I landed in Israel on October 2nd after missing my original arrival date of October 1st because I missed my connecting flight in Philadelphia due to bad weather. When I first landed here, I was a little nervous. I had no idea what to expect. But I heard nothing but good comments from previous players who were in the league last year. Each team has three Americans, and luckily, I knew both of my teammates, Alysha Clark and Khadijah Whittington, prior to coming to Israel.

So far Israel is a great place. There’s beautiful, hot weather here, and being that I am from Florida, I am used to the heat. The people are nice, and a majority of them speak English. The scenery is amazing. So many things are different from America. My teammates and I have been to a lot of places touring, and we visited the beach last week. One thing I can say about the beach in Israel is that it’s one of the best I have seen! I had a chance to meet a lot of American players at this welcome party we had last week. They brought all the team’s players to this amazing restaurant called SOHO, which is my favorite in Israel for right now, and we all ate and danced to music. It was a treat to see familiar faces in another country. We had a good time!

Playing here is fun and exciting. My teammates are real cool people. We all get along and bond really well, which is one thing that will help us this season. The only hard part, so far, about playing is when they speak Hebrew to one another and we Americans can’t understand so we get lost. I’ve been trying to learn some Hebrew day by day. Our league is very tough; there are numerous current and former WNBA players. Since arriving, we’ve had “two-a-days,” which has helped with conditioning and chemistry. We’ve practiced for two weeks so far, and just had a game this past Monday. We won our first league game against Elitzur Netanya. We played very well. We were the underdogs according to all of the Israeli press going into that game, but we handled our business. It was a good game. We ended up winning 100-67. That was my first official game back after surgery, and it felt good to be back! It took me no time to get back in the flow. I ended up with 30 points, six rebounds and four steals. My debut turned out good. My knee felt good afterwards! I’m still rehabbing and keeping my knee strong while overseas.

Overall, my experience in Israel has been great so far. This week we are preparing for our next game, so in the mean time I will be practicing and still finding new and unique things to do in Israel.

Until next time,
Danielle McCray #4