Omri Casspi To Play for Houston Rockets
Image by getty images
Omri Casspi, the first Israeli-born player to join the NBA, reportedly has agreed to a two-year, $2 million contract with the Houston Rockets.
Casspi, 25, who played the last two seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, told the Cleveland Jewish News that he hopes to sign the contract on Wednesday or Thursday.
The 6-9 forward became an unrestricted agent earlier this month when the Cavs opted not to extend his $3.3 million contract.
Image by getty images
Casspi had seen his playing time diminish in Cleveland, where he averaged 4 points and 2.7 rebounds this season playing nearly 12 minutes a game. He had played two seasons with the Sacramento Kings, coming into the league with great fanfare in the Jewish community, before being traded to the Cavs.
The Rockets have been interested in signing Casspi for a long time, according to Yahoo!Sports. Houston recently signed star center Dwight Howard, the most coveted free agent on the market. Last week a second Israeli, Gal Mekel, joined the NBA, agreeing to a contract with the Dallas Mavericks. Mekel last month helped lead Maccabi Haifa to the Israeli championship in an upset of Maccabi Tel Aviv.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
