Hapoel Eilat

Twice Hapoel Eilat reached the final of the Israeli Basketball Premier League, and twice it went home with silver. In 1997–98 Maccabi Tel Aviv stood in the way; in 2014–15, seventeen years on, it was Hapoel Jerusalem. Between those two nights sits a gap the club never quite closed, and by then the team had already been rebuilt once from nothing.

That climb ran through the second tier, where Eilat took the Liga Artzit title in 1991 on the way up, and through the Association Cup, won in 2011 as the top flight remained out of reach. A domestic cup final followed in 2013–14, lost again to Maccabi Tel Aviv, and two League Cup finals, in 2015 and 2021, added to the pile of runner-up medals without ever turning one into a trophy.

The rivalry that defined the club longest was local, against Maccabi Eilat, and it ran until August 2024, when the two sides merged into a single team, initially named Hapoel Ironi Eilat before being rebranded as Ironi Eilat.

The league title and the State Cup both stayed out of reach.