1. Pini Gershon won three top-level European-wide club championships as the head coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv.
19 Facts About Pini Gershon
1. 2.
Pini Gershon won the FIBA SuproLeague championship in 2001, and the EuroLeague championship in 2004 and 2005.
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Pini Gershon is widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches in Israeli and European history.
4.
Pini Gershon was named the EuroLeague Coach of the Year in 2005.
5.
Pini Gershon was the head coach of the senior Bulgarian national team.
6.
Pini Gershon's mother was a Moroccan Jew and his father was a Bulgarian Jew.
7.
Pini Gershon experienced a rough childhood, as his biological father abandoned the family when he was one year old and left him with his mother, in poverty conditions and moved to England; his step-father was abusive towards him, his sister and their mother.
8.
Pini Gershon played for the "Maccabi South Tel Aviv" club, which was a sister team of Maccabi Tel Aviv, and he was one of the stars in its cadets team.
9.
Pini Gershon played for a number of years, including in the senior men's team of Maccabi South Tel Aviv, but his career as a basketball player ended at the age of 24, as the result of an injury.
10.
In 1996, Pini Gershon won the Israeli State Cup, while he was the head coach of Hapoel Jerusalem, after beating Maccabi in the final.
11.
Pini Gershon had the goal of reaching the 2004 EuroLeague Final Four, which took place in Tel Aviv.
12.
In 2005, Pini Gershon led Maccabi Tel Aviv to another EuroLeague championship.
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Pini Gershon was later named the EuroLeague Coach of the Year.
14.
Pini Gershon led the team to the 2006 EuroLeague Final Four.
15.
Pini Gershon left Maccabi at the end of the season, and signed with the Greek club Olympiacos.
16.
Pini Gershon took close to 6 minutes to exit the court, as NBA rules differ from international rules, regarding technical fouls, which cause coaches to be automatically ejected.
17.
In 2010, Pini Gershon parted ways with Maccabi, after their loss to Hapoel Gilboa Galil, in the Israeli League national finals.
18.
Pini Gershon worked as an assistant coach for the senior Israeli national basketball team.
19.
In September 2008, Pini Gershon led the senior Bulgarian national basketball team to qualify for the EuroBasket 2009, in Poland, after a surprising finish ahead of the strongly favored Italian national basketball team in the preliminary round.