Herbalife Gran Canaria Las Palmas signed point guard Gal Mekel for the coming season, the club announced Friday.
Mekel (1.92 meters, 29 years old) arrives from his boyhood club, Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv, where he has spent the past season and a half. He averaged 4.5 points and 3.3 assists 24 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague games last season and 11.4 points and 5.1 assists in the Israeli League.
Mekel returns to the EuroCup where he averaged 16.3 points and 5.7 assists for Maccabi two seasons ago. Mekel has also played in the EuroCup for Benetton Treviso of Italy and Hapoel Gilboa Galil of Israel and in the EuroLeague for Crvena Zvezda Belgrade and Nizhny Novgorod of Russia.
Mekel grew up in Maccabi Tel Aviv’s youth program before playing college basketball for two years at Wichita State University. He joined Galil for the first time in 2008, led the club to the Israeli championship a season later and was the 2010-11 Israeli League MVP. After one season with Benetton, he returned to Israel with Maccabi Haifa for the 2012-13 season, during which was named Israeli League MVP for the second time in three years and took Haifa to its first Israeli championship.
Mekel then went abroad and played for Dallas and New Orleans in the NBA before returning to Europe with Nizhny and later Zvezda and Maccabi. Mekel is also a regular on the Israeli national team.
