There’s a weird, psychological tension around basketball fouls. Not unlike a trial. A single rubbered heartbeat thumps in our collective throats. In basketball litigation, the verdict is televised and delivered in public by the referee’s whistle. Deni Avdija faced more trials than a career criminal in early January, when he scored 41 points in the Portland Trail Blazers’ win over the Houston Rockets. Twenty-eight came from the field. The other 13 were handed to him at the stripe.
The online response was immediate, echoing the criticism that has followed the Israeli all season: he’s a free-throw merchant. It’s a specific kind of hoops pejorative – not quite cheating, but a kind of outsourcing, farming points out to the refs. After the game, Rockets forward Tari Eason was asked what makes Avdija so difficult to guard. His answer was one word: “Zebras.”
Free throws piss us off because they’re a successful grift, like follow-up emails. And Avdija has made them work this season – he is second in the league in free-throw attempts per game, and third in free-throws made. That production has made him as the frontrunner for the Most Improved Player award and earned his first All-Star reserve role, finishing ahead of LeBron James and Kevin Durant in the second fan-voting returns. The Trail Blazers look poised to make the play-in, which would be their first postseason appearance since 2021.
But visibility invites scrutiny. Since arriving in Portland in 2024 and being empowered as a point-forward, Avdija has played with a downhill, neurotic energy. He strikes a contrapposto pose before diving into carnage, absorbing all the unseen elbows and shit talk, and yes, waiting for the call. Fans mock this kind of stuff … unless their team’s superstar employs it. While elite floppers such as James Harden or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are criticized for on-court shenanigans, the ire leveled at Avdija spills into judgments about who he is and where he is from.
This isn’t a defense of Avdija’s politics, nor an attempt to launder them through basketball. As Advija’s notoriety rises, so will the criticism. The internet gases up entropy. So we’ve seen the basketball insults devolve. Terrorist. Genocidal. An already controversial athlete has been transformed into a proxy for the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. But we should be able to criticize what Avdija has said without pretending that the way he plays is a reflection of Israel’s bloodshed in Gaza.
The scrutiny doesn’t emerge from nowhere. As an Israeli, Avdija is one of the very few NBA players with publicly documented service in the Israel Defense Forces. Avdija was born on a kibbutz in northern Israel and enlisted in April 2020, during the NBA’s pandemic pause, under Israel’s mandatory conscription system. That fact is searchable. It’s certainly been passed around. Since Israel’s large-scale bombing of Gaza, it’s calcified into an accusation.
I believe Israel’s actions in Gaza are genocide. All the world has forsaken Palestine. But we don’t need to lie to make a point. Avdija has not committed war crimes. There’s no evidence tying him to specific acts of violence against civilians, and he completed his service in North America playing basketball. He served before the Gaza bloodshed, when he was only 19, an age old enough to serve, but young enough for someone not to have developed iron-clad views. Claims require proof. The word crime is reserved for actions that can be demonstrated, not simply inferred to fit confirmation bias.
Some argue that serving in the IDF is itself a war crime. That’s an impossible, specious standard. To collapse all service into criminality is to abandon the distinction between institutional violence and personal culpability. That distinction is the only thing separating accountability from chaos.
So Avdija clearly isn’t the enemy here, even though I’m not rooting for him either. The real sins come from way higher up the ladder. People are rightly furious our US tax dollars continue to fund a genocide. It began under a Democrat, Joe Biden, and continues under a Republican, Donald Trump. We struggle just sitting with our anger. So we strike out with balled fists – at someone we can project our rage upon, and Avdija is an easy target, not the target.
States commit atrocities. Governments lie. Militaries enforce policy. Individuals exist within those systems, sometimes complicit, sometimes constrained, and occasionally wrong without being criminal. There’s another complication. Avdija is a Zionist. That is, if the word is used according to its dictionary definition – which includes someone being “a supporter of modern Israel” – rather than as slur.
In a March 2025 interview with Israel Hayom, Avdija said, “I love Israel”, and described representing his country as a source of pride and responsibility. Avdija has also said, “not everyone understands 100% what’s happening in Israel”, adding that he tries to explain the situation “from the right good side.”
Zionism doesn’t imply criminality, but fans are entitled to criticize Avdija’s national pride when he’s been totally silent about the mass Palestinian civilian deaths at the hands of his home country. When images of destroyed neighborhoods and dead children routinely circulate across social feeds, neutrality can’t be viewed as a serious position. And Avdija continues to express his support for Israel despite its actions. In a recent profile in the Athletic, Avidja expressed anger at Israel’s critics and at how politics and basketball are routinely linked with him.
“I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job,” Avdija said. “I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate. Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player.”
This is the trap: he wants the benefits of nationalism without any accountability for what that nationalism is doing in the world. Maybe Avdija genuinely believes Israel’s actions in Gaza are fine, which is his right. But he shouldn’t be surprised – or complain – when he gets backlash for wading into the subject.
And athletes have shown you can love aspects of your country – your family, your friends, the ideals it is supposed to represent – while also being deeply uncomfortable about its actions. Under Trump, we have seen children snatched away by federal officials, citizens shot dead in the streets, and our supposed allies threatened and insulted. When asked about representing the US at the Winter Olympics last week, freestyle skier Hunter Hess eloquently expressed his ambivalence.
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the US right now … It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think for me it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe are good about the US,” Hess said.
But just because Hess’s views are noble doesn’t make him a better skier – though it may make him easier to root for. And just because Avdija’s comments are, at best, tone deaf it doesn’t mean he’s a worse basketball player. It’s possible to be furious about the Gaza bloodbath – and our tax dollars funding it – without collapsing the argument, lazily, into a basketball debate. It’s far more important than that. Especially when the jazzed-up thump of online dribble is easier to referee. The danger isn’t that Avdija escapes criticism. The danger is that in making crucial debates into arguments about basketball, we lose sight of what is really important.
Otherwise, anything can become an indictment – even a free throw.
