Derrick Sharp

Derrick Sharp

Maccabi Tel Aviv
Position	Point guard Shooting guard
League	Israeli Super League Euroleague
Personal information
Born	(1971-10-05) October 5, 1971 Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Nationality	American-Israeli
Listed height	6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
Listed weight	185 lb (84 kg)
Career information
College	University of South Florida
Playing career	1993–present

Derrick Sharp (born October 5, 1971) is an American-Israeli professional basketball player. Sharp was born in Orlando, Florida. He went to Israel in 1993 after playing college basketball with the University of South Florida.

He currently plays for the Maccabi Tel-Aviv basketball club. As well as being the team captain, he is also its most senior member; the 2010-11 season is his 15th with Maccabi. With Maccabi, he won a record 27 trophies.

Pro career

Sharp joined Maccabi Hadera from Leumit Bet (The second league at the time) in 1993. From 1994 to 1996 he played for Hapoel Migdal-HaEmek, also a Leumit Bet team, and then made the big jump to the most well known team in Israel - Maccabi Tel-Aviv.

With Maccabi, Sharp won 12 national championships, 11 national cups, 2 league cups and 3 European titles (2001 Suproleague, 2004 and 2005 Euroleague). He quickly became crowd favorite for his tough defense, three-point shooting and clutch plays. The most memorable example of the latter came on April 8, 2004 against Zalgiris Kaunas. With 2 seconds remaining and Maccabi trailing by 3 points and facing elimination from the finals series, Sharp caught a long pass from Gur Shelef, turned to the basket and fired a game-tying three-pointer, forcing overtime. Maccabi won that game, advanced to the Final Four (held in Tel Aviv that year) and became Euroleague Champion.

Israeli national team

Sharp is a naturalized Israeli citizen, and has played for the Israeli national team (2000–03), including appearances at Eurobasket 2001 and Eurobasket 2003.

Personal

Sharp was married to an Israeli citizen, with whom he had a son. The marriage ended in divorce, and he later remarried, and went on to have three children with his second wife.

External links

• Euroleague.net Profile
• Maccabi Tel-Aviv profile