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Last update - 18:34 07/08/2008
Legendary basketball coach Ralph Klein dies, aged 77
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Ralph Klein, Basketball 

Former Israel Basketball Team coach Ralph Klein passed away Thursday after a long battle with colorectal cancer.

Klein's casket will be put on display Friday at the Nokia center in Tel Aviv, where Klein's former team Maccabi Tel-Aviv plays their home games.

Klein was born in 1931 to an affluent Jewish family in Berlin, who moved to Budapest, Hungary shortly before the Second World War. Ralph's father perished in Auschwitz but Ralph, his mother, brother and sister, were saved from the Nazis through the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg, who gave them Swedish diplomatic protection.
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Klein stayed in Hungary after the war, and as a teenager played basketball for the Hungarian national league. In 1951, he immigrated to Israel with his mother and after a stint in the nascent Israel Navy, he began his professional basketball career with Maccabi Tel Aviv. Over the course of his career with Maccabi, Klein played 160 games, scored 2,701 points and won eight championships and six state cups.

Klein later became the skipper of Maccabi Tel Aviv in 1970, leading the powerhouse squad to 14 championships and a European title in 1977.

In 1983, he surprised many in Israel and abroad when he was appointed head coach of the Germany national basketball team, where he served until 1985.

After his retirement, Klein took an active role in teaching and coaching children, rising in the early morning nearly every day to show them the finer points of basketball, and the life lessons it can teach.

On and off the court, Klein earned a bevy of accolades, including the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 2006, and was given the honor of lighting a torch at festivities marking Israel's 56th anniversary.

Transportation Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday offered his "Deep condolences over the passing of basketball coach and Israel Prize Laureate Ralph Klein," who he praised for his years as a succesfull coach and later days spent as a coach and role model for Israeli children
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