Day Two Overseas: The Jet Lag Reality Check

Day two overseas hits very differently.

The adrenaline of “arrival day” wears off quick. The airport greetings, the photos of your new apartment, even the excitement of posting a “new team, new season” update on the Gram…it all fades the second you wake up for that first full day.

And if you’re unlucky, that first full day comes with a bubble gut practice. Jet lag doesn’t care. Coaches don’t care. Suddenly you’re standing in a foreign gym with legs that feel somehow like Jello AND cement, lungs that forgot how to breathe, and a brain that’s still somewhere over the Atlantic.

If you’re like me, sometimes day one is somehow day two. I’ve had teams throw me straight into practice right off the plane with no sleep, or no chance to unpack. You don’t even know what city you’re in yet, and suddenly you’re running sprints outside.

For me, one of those Day Two moments became a story I’ll never forget. Here’s a piece from my book Overseas Famous:

Arriving safely on the ground set my mind at ease during the two-hour drive to Włocławek. That is until we pulled up to the graffiti-covered arena. The large concrete monstrosity served as my training facility for the next nine months. On the entrance wall wasn’t a mural of the team or some sort of street art, but random illicit blue and black scribblings. I’m not sure why this stuck out in my mind or why it was all I could notice, but this was a professional basketball team offering more money than I had ever seen, and the building looked like an absolute shithole.

At that time, I assumed the internet was a giant collection of factual data and that it would never lie to me. I usually Asked Jeeves for information about the city I would be living in. The images never showed the dilapidation caused by war, neglect or random people being dicks. Instead, the internet focused on the beautiful European structures that lined the center of the city. The beautiful pieces of art I remembered from my search a few days before were replaced by the grey concrete building that stood before me.

The crazy thing about basketball is that no matter where you go, it remains the same. The rules are the same. The rims are the same. The court is the same. Everything within the lines of the wooden territory is familiar. Outside those lines, that is a different story.

This Polish gym was no different than the gyms I had spent countless hours in before that day. It had wood floors, a three-point line and an orange rim. I unpacked my shoes and joined my first practice just twenty minutes after I arrived in Włocławek.

Practicing right after a cross-continental flight is never pretty. Some people call it getting the plane out of you. I call it trying not to shit myself after eating Polish KFC on the drive from the airport. Regardless, that first practice was rough. My legs were not working, my shots weren’t falling, and my lungs were exhausted. Luckily, my ass cheeks were making up for the muscle fatigue in other areas of my body, or it would have been an embarrassing first day.

Why Day Two Matters

Every overseas athlete has some version of this story. Day one is easy...you’re fueled by nerves and excitement. Day two is the test. You’re tired, you’re confused, and suddenly you realize this isn’t a vacation...this is your job.

The graffiti-covered gym, the bad food choices, the body that refuses to cooperate...that’s the overseas baptism.

It’s also why those first 48 hours stick in your brain forever. You remember the smells, the sounds, the look of the gym, even the color of the graffiti. Because Day Two is when reality hits and you either laugh at it or let it bury you.

So let’s make this fun. What’s your worst or funniest Day Two practice story?

Was it jet lag so bad you forgot which basket was yours? Did you cramp up mid-drill? Did the coach scream at you for being slow even though your brain was still stuck at customs?

Drop your story in the comments.

Because if there’s one thing that unites all of us overseas, it’s the brutal, hilarious, and humbling disaster that is Day Two.