T. J. Leaf
American-Israeli basketball player
Ty Jacob Leaf (Hebrew: טיי ג'ייקוב ליף; born April 30, 1997) is an Israeli-American professional basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Israeli Basketball Premier League and the EuroLeague. After playing one season of college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, he was selected by the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the 2017 NBA draft with the 18th overall pick.
Leaf was named an All-American as a high school senior in 2016. As a UCLA freshman in 2016–17, he earned first-team all-conference honors in the Pac-12. He began his NBA career with three seasons in Indiana, but was unable to carry over his college success. He joined the Portland Trail Blazers as a free agent in 2021. Leaf also played for Israel's Under-18 junior national team at the 2015 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship B Division.
Early life
Leaf was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to Karen and Brad Leaf. His father was playing professional basketball in Israel at the time, and he enjoyed a 17-year career in the country. Leaf lived his first 2+1⁄2 years in Tel Aviv before growing up in Lakeside, California, in San Diego County.
The public source identifies “T. J. Leaf” as american-Israeli basketball player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leaf, American-Israeli and basketball.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24439139. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2017, 2016 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “T. J. Leaf” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.