Brooklyn Nets Draft One-Fifth of a Minyan
The Brooklyn Nets drafted two Israelis, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf, back to back in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft on June 25.
Saraf and Wolf, the first Israelis to be NBA teammates, will join Portland Trail Blazer Deni Avdija, part of CIE’s Israel@75 list of current Israelis, as active players in the pro basketball league.
Saraf, 19, is a 6-foot-6 guard who went pro with Israeli second-division team Elitzur Netanya at 16, spent the 2023-24 season in the top-level Israeli Premier League with Elitzur Kiryat Ata, and reached the championship finals of the top German league this season with Ratiopharm Ulm.
He was born in Israel to two parents who played professional basketball. He also brings numerology to the court, according to JTA: He wears No. 77 to represent the Hebrew word mazal, meaning luck.
The Nets drafted him 26th overall and fourth of their five first-round picks.
You can read stats and scouting reports on Saraf from Yahoo!,NBA.com, ESPN, RealGM and FIBA (the international basketball federation).
“Saraf has great size for a ball handler and strong playmaking instincts, giving him a path to rotation minutes if he can improve his perimeter shooting and defense,” ESPN’s Jeremy Woo wrote after the draft.
Wolf, 21, is a Jewish American from Illinois who attended Jewish day school through fifth grade and keeps kosher, JTA reports. He obtained Israeli citizenship to play for Israel’s under-20 national team in the 2023 European Championship in Greece. Israel finished second in that tournament.
He’s a 7-footer who plays power forward and center. He spenttwo seasons at Yale, then transferred for the 2024-25 season to Michigan, where he was second-team All-Big Ten and a finalist for the Karl Malone Award, given to the country’s top power forward.
Wolf had been projected to be picked in the middle of the first round, but the Nets grabbed him 27th overall and the fifth of their first-rounders.
His older brother, Jake, got social media notice for his teary reaction to the selection. Wolf was credited with one of the funniest moments of draft night when he corrected his mother, Tina, on live national television after she said he was excited to be drafted by New York rather than Brooklyn.
You can read stats and scouting reports on Wolf from Yahoo!, NBA.com, ESPN, HoopsHype and Bleacher Report.
“His uncommon mix of passing and perimeter skills at his size, but also some defensive shortcomings and limited athleticism, made him one of the more polarizing evaluations in the draft,”Woo wrote. “The Nets were among the teams higher on Wolf during the process.”
Joshua Halickman, the Sports Rabbi, has more details about Saraf and Wolf and their draft night, as does Unpacked for Educators.
While several pro basketball players became Israeli citizens after their NBA careers, often after playing in Israel, Saraf and Wolf are only the fifth and sixth players to enter the league as Israelis. Omri Casspi, drafted by the Sacramento Kings in 2009, was the first, followed by Gal Mekel, who signed with the Dallas Mavericks in 2013; T.J. Leaf, drafted by the Indiana Pacers in 2017; and Avidja, picked by the Washington Wizards in 2020.
Arguably Israel’s most famous basketball player, Tal Brody, took a different path: An American drafted in the first round out of the University of Illinois in 1965, he skipped the NBA to immigrate to Israel and play for Maccabi Tel Aviv.