Basketball Hall-of-Famer Nancy Lieberman's son forced to evacuate from Israel
DALLAS - T.J. Cline, son of Basketball Hall-of-Famer Nancy Lieberman, has played professionally overseas in multiple countries. He's currently playing for Hapoel Eilat, a team in Israel near Jordan, getting ready for the season opener.
But suddenly in the midst of war, Cline and his American teammates were forced to evacuate, taking an emergency flight to Athens. He landed in Dallas Thursday night.
"I’m not joyous because I’m home because I want to be over there doing my job and being with the Israeli people. But the best word is probably relief," he said.
Cline shared a video he recorded when his flight out of Israel landed.
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Cline told us about meeting up with his team shortly after the war started and the tense moments, even in Eilat, which is said to be one of the safer parts of Israel.
"Everyone was running through the promenade, and everyone was yelling, ‘Balagan!’ That means mess in Hebrew," he recalled. "And after like five minutes, everyone was like ok. There were soldiers running around, checking the situation. No one knew who it was. There were tweets Hamas was on foot. I called my mom and was letting her know it’s the scariest I’ve been."
In Israel, men and women are trained in the military when they become a certain age, preparing them if they are ever called back. That happened this week for some of Cline’s teammates.
"My starting point guard got sent back. We had practice Monday," he said.
And it became even more real on Friday morning when Cline’s team posted a picture on social media. The person in the picture played for the team’s youth division. He was killed this week.
"They posted of a kid in our youth who was a big supporter of the club. He had been taken, and that situation, it hits a bit closer because he’s a supporter of what we do," Cline said. "Obviously, it’s not like those people are more significant. But when someone is in your internal team, it’s a family. Eilat is a family. Every team is a family in Israel. It’s so spiritual but so connective. It was a sad thing."
While Cline is eager to get back to doing the thing he loves, he says the focus is on lives and people’s safety.
"There was not one person that I came in contact with in the time after from Saturday until Tuesday who didn’t have a friend or family who was either taken, killed, a hostage was at the event," he said. "We are excited to get back when this ends. No one is in a rush to get back. No one cares about basketball more than people’s lives."