John Helyar is a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and former senior writer for ESPN. He is also the author of Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball, named one of the top 100 sports books by Sports Illustrated. He is currently affiliated with Bloomberg News.
Commentary by John Helyar
    June 4 (Bloomberg) — The spirit of the Olympics is alive and well.
    It’s just that it’s not in Lausanne, Switzerland, the
headquarters of the multinational, multibillion-dollar
enterprise known as the International Olympic Committee.
    Nor is it in Beijing, where the biggest, scariest,
costliest games in history will happen this summer.
    It is, rather, to be found this week in 18 modest
gymnasiums scattered around Israel and by another name: The
Friendship Games.
    Has your columnist lost his mind?
    These are not the 302-event, 205-nation competitions thrust
on us by NBC. This is an 18-country, one-sport tournament:
basketball.
    Unlike the Olympics, these games don’t have the bevy of
corporate sponsors who’ll combine to spend almost $1 billion to
link themselves to the rings. The Friendship Games are almost
solely underwritten by an American entrepreneur named Ed
Peskowitz, who’s a part-owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.
    Unlike so many Olympic hopefuls, the more than 300 athletes
in the Friendship Games have no hopes of getting fat endorsement
contracts if they are successful. Some only hope they won’t get
reprisals when they return home. They come from countries where
a lot of citizens don’t understand or approve of the underlying
premise of the games: hoops for peace.
    In its first three years, this tournament’s brackets have
been chock full of teams that aren’t just rivals but sworn
enemies: Israel and Palestine, Croatia and Serbia, Turkey and
Cyprus. That’s not true for the whole field, but the whole
founding premise of this exercise is to convert hard feelings to
mutual respect via the hardcourt.
                        Power of Hoops
    Peskowitz hatched the idea in 2005 as he watched the World
Maccabiah Games, a multisport competition among Jewish athletes.
He observed particularly closely the basketball competition, as
a guest of Atlanta Hawks assistant Herb Brown, who was coaching
the U.S. team.
    Peskowitz saw the power of hoops to create bonds among
players from far-flung places. Why not apply that to bringing
together vastly different, mostly hostile ethnic groups?
Peskowitz knows how to dream big. He and his partners built
United Communications Group, a Gaithersberg, Maryland,
information and publishing company, from a startup to giant.
    Peskowitz approached Arie Rosenzweig, the athletic director
of Tel Aviv University and a power in Israel athletics, with his
concept: a round-robin basketball tournament that would bring
together Middle Eastern foes.
                       Fulfilling a Vision
    “I said `this is impossible,”’ recalls Rosenzweig, who
nonetheless wound up in the middle of organizing the first
Friendship Games. Now he’s a true believer. This isn’t the only
outfit with a “hoops for peace” mission. Others include
Basketball Without Borders, PeacePlayers and NBA Cares. But this
is the one organization that boldly throws sworn enemies into
close proximity.
    “We are fulfilling Pierre de Coubertin’s vision of the
Olympics,” says Rosenzweig, referring to the founder of the
modern games. “In the Olympics today, everybody wants to win a
medal. The most important thing used to be participation. That’s
what we’re about.”
    The first Friendship Games in 2006 had teams from eight
countries. Now there are 18 countries and a total of 26 teams,
10 of them women’s entries. But that expansion is partially a
function of problems with the original concept. It has been
tough getting a quorum of Middle Eastern countries to
participate. Lebanon, Syria and Dubai are absent, among others.
                        Israel-Palestine
    On the other hand, there have been occasions when normally
huge ethnic differences melt in the heat of a glorious moment.
Last year, the sad-sack Jordanian team begged Brown, who was
doing clinics in conjunction with the games, to assume their
command in mid-tournament. These Arabic kids didn’t care that
Brown was a 70-year-old American Jew. He was a veteran NBA
coach; maybe he could give them game.
    Did he ever. The Jordanians promptly upset Russia, creating
the Friendship Games’ version of the U.S. hockey team’s 1980
“Miracle on Ice.” Brown, who is the brother of Hall of Fame
coach Larry Brown, returned to Jordan this year.
    The 2008 games are building to the big Israel-Palestine
showdown today. It’s sort of like the Lakers and Celtics, in
terms of anticipation and electricity, but with heavier
security. As far as the Friendship Games’ organizers know, this
is the first time Israelis have played Palestinians in sports.
    For the Palestinians, just dressing for the game is an act
of courage. Players declined to be interviewed for fear of being
named. They could be subject to attacks by countrymen for
participating.
                     Politics and Athletics
    This is as much a political act as an athletic contest for
Israeli players, too, acknowledges team captain Liav Theled.
“My family and buddies were kind of surprised (at Israelis
playing Palestinians),” he said. “But we are going to be
friendly and sportsmen and let the sport be bigger than us.”
    What happens on the court isn’t the half of it, as
Friendship Games’ organizers see it. Players intermingle for
many hours beyond the games, whether seeing the sights around
Israel on buses or drinking and dancing the nights away.
    Ibrihim Abu-Ahmed, a center for Nazareth, a second Israeli
team, was less interested in discussing their two-point loss to
Ireland with me than the beers he’d had the night before with
the Irish players — and the Jordanians and the Serbians.
    “This is one of the best things you could ever do,” said
Abu-Ahmed, who is playing in his first Friendship Games.
                        Rising Costs
    Peskowitz tells of a Turkish player and a Cypriot player
who wouldn’t even get in a cab together one night when only one
was available. After lengthy negotiations they reluctantly
shared it. “Several days later, I saw them sharing a table at
dinner,” says Peskowitz.
    He’s proud of all the players who’ve not only gotten open
looks at the basket in the Friendship Games but at people they
thought they hated. The games’ growth means rising costs,
however — about $700,000 in 2008.
    Peskowitz has begun looking for a corporate sponsor. “No
way I can fund it indefinitely,” he says. “These are not the
Paris peace talks, but they’re small steps.”
    (John Helyar, co-author of “Barbarians at the Gate,” is
an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own.)
