Between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s, Jewish men and women in North African countries, especially in Egypt and Morocco, excelled in the game of basketball. Jewish teams won national titles, and in Egypt, Jewish players were even over-represented in the national team. The Jewish press in those countries covered the success of Jewish players with much enthusiasm and pride. While Jews did play soccer in these countries, there is no evidence of comparable success or level of excitement about this sport. However, shortly after the mass immigration to Israel, this pattern has been reversed – especially among the second generation. As early as 1966, second-generation Mizrahi immigrants were overrepresented among soccer players and extremely under-represented among basketball players. A 1969 survey revealed disproportional interest in soccer among second-generation North African Jews. While soccer has been certainly the most popular sport among Jewish Israelis of various origins since then, the gap between interest in soccer and basketball is especially pronounced among Mizrahi Jews, a pattern that contradicts the popularity of basketball among Jewish communities in their country of origin. The paper relies on the press, archival research, and statistical analysis of a series of public opinion polls conducted between 1969 to 2021 to argue that this inversion is related to the differential class orientation of soccer and basketball. Throughout the Mediterranean, basketball has developed as a game associated with a Europhilic middle-upper class, as opposed to soccer which has been much more inclusive class-wise. The generational transition of North African Jews from basketball to soccer has represented their downward class mobility following their immigration to Israel. North African immigrants who arrived in Israel’s big cities in the 1950s and 1960s were over-proportionally located in the less affluent parts of these cities, and therefore their social contact with the Ashkenazi population was over-proportionally with the working-class, a factor that might have affected their leisure opportunities, which led to the development of a different sport habitus and taste than the first generation.