Next Star: On Jared Harper’s Breakout Season

At the end of last July, Hapoel signed a new guard: Jared Harper. When Yonatan Alon and Dan Shamir surveyed the market and identified Harper as the player they wanted - a scoring guard who can both create for himself and for others, had previously played alongside Austin Wiley, and most importantly, was at an age where his prime was still ahead of him - they believed they had found the missing piece of the puzzle. But they didn’t know just how right they were.

On paper, the team was built around a dominant point guard - someone who had led the team for two seasons and whose performance was key to winning or losing. And Harper, with all his talent, still carried some question marks after two underwhelming years in Valencia and concerns about his undersized frame. But within just a few games, those question marks turned into exclamation points.

Although the roster was seemingly built with Harper as a complementary guard alongside Speedy Smith, the reality shifted quickly. Harper became the frontman of the Reds' offense. He took clutch shots even during the preseason - a preview of what was to come. From the very first rounds, he put on dazzling offensive performances, earning player of the game and round honors game after game. At just 178 cm, he repeatedly carried the team on his back, leading Hapoel through a perfect November, in which the team didn’t lose a single game and Harper averaged 23.2 points and a performance index rating (PIR) of 27.2.

He reached a new peak last week, scoring 30 points against Maccabi Tel Aviv and becoming only the second player in history to do so in a Hapoel win over Maccabi - the first being Doron Shefa, who scored 32 points on 100% shooting over 32 years ago. His form continued into an outstanding December, where he averaged 22 points per game. And last night, in the first game of the new calendar year, Harper delivered yet another stellar performance — flirting with the 30-point mark once again, finishing with 29 points, 5 assists, a PIR of 38, and perhaps most impressively - 10 drawn fouls.

So yes, Harper has been a major success - and now it’s time to dive into the numbers.
He leads both the Israeli league and the EuroCup in scoring:

• 20.9 PPG in the Israeli league

• 23.3 PPG in the EuroCup (five points ahead of second-place Xavier Simpson with 18.3)

In the European competition, Harper also leads all players in average PIR with 28.7. Beyond his scoring totals, he’s also shooting extremely well:

• 50.6% from two-point range

• 45% from three

A rising star. Harper on his way to drawing another foul

As we’ve already seen, Jared Harper is not the kind of player you come across often in Israel. One of the weapons that makes him nearly unstoppable is his ability to draw fouls. He attacks the paint aggressively with two outcomes in mind: either finish at the rim or get fouled. This season, Harper has drawn an astonishing 181 fouls, smashing records along the way. In the EuroCup, he leads the competition in fouls drawn per game with 8.6, surpassing the previous record of 7.9 held by Bojan Popovi? in the 2004–05 season.

But Harper doesn’t just draw fouls - he scores through contact. His style is to drive hard to the rim and force defenders to make tough decisions. Watch in the following clip how sometimes, even fouling can’t stop Jared Harper:
In conclusion, Jared Harper may be exactly the kind of player Hapoel Jerusalem needed. A player who takes the team on his shoulders, delivers in the clutch, and most importantly - wins games. Time will tell whether this level of play will lead to trophies, but one thing is already clear: if anyone can lead Hapoel to that goal, it’s Jared Harper.

Let’s wrap up with his best plays from last night: