Nobody Puts This Part in the Contract

When you’re an athlete playing in a country where everything could change overnight

There’s a specific type of anxiety that comes with playing professionally overseas that I don’t think people back home really, truly understand. I’ve written about the loneliness, and shitty teams, and the checks that never showed up, and the mental toll of being thousands of miles from everybody you love. One part of this life I’ve barely touched on…is what happens when the country you’re living in is dealing with political unrest, military tension, or the possibility that people might start shooting at each other again.

When I flew into Kosovo, I could see the war from the plane window before we even landed in Prishtina. There were bomb craters, buildings that had been blown apart, and whole villages that people had walked away from and never come back to. Once I was on the ground, it didn’t take long to notice the hate and anger were very fucking apparent, even though the fighting had stopped. Those wounds were still wide open, and here was me…some American basketball player who barely knew where he currently was.

A few hours earlier my biggest worry had been figuring out where I fit in the team’s offense, and now I was in the back of a random’s car, staring out at all that destruction and wondering what the fuck I had gotten myself into.

South Korea was a completely different situation, but still stirred up some of those oh-so-familiar feelings. There was a strong American military presence, and I had a few conversations with soldiers who explained…pretty casually, how fast everything could change. They told me they were ready to move at a moment’s notice if North Korea ever came across the border. Meanwhile, I was stressing about my basketball bullshit.

The strangest part is that life just keeps going. You wake up, eat breakfast, go to practice, lift, and come home. You go grocery shopping and stand in the aisle trying to figure out what the fuck you’re holding because you can’t read a single word on the label. The whole time, sitting somewhere in the back of your mind, is the idea that everything could be different by the time you wake up tomorrow.

I caught myself mentally preparing for things I never imagined I’d have to think about as a basketball player. If something happens, where do I go and who do I call? How do I get to the airport, and is the airport even going to be open? Who can I trust to get me out of here? I’m still not sure who the fuck would have had the answers to any of that.

None of us signed up for that. Most of us are young players who were warned about things we’re supposed to worry about , like conditioning and whether anybody is going to offer us a contract next season. Then you look up one day and you’re thousands of miles from home, in a place where survival has quietly become one more thing on the list.

Nobody is posted outside your door, and there’s no protected hotel with a staff whose job is to get you out if things go bad. You’re in an apartment the team rented for you, maybe in a neighborhood you don’t know, surrounded by people you can’t talk to.

Now picture somebody knocking on that door in the middle of the night, telling you they’re with the team and you need to come with them right now because something happened. Do you go with them? Do you ask for ID, or call your coach first, and what do you do when your coach doesn’t pick up? Maybe the person on the other side of that door is trying to save your life while you stand there wasting time, or maybe they’re not, and you’ve got about thirty seconds to figure out which.

That’s the kind of scenario your brain starts building when you’re far from home and you don’t fully trust the people or the systems around you. The worst part is that you have no idea how you’d react until you’re standing at that door.

I met incredible people in both Kosovo and South Korea, people who welcomed me, looked out for me, and made those seasons worth every bit of the trouble. Kosovo especially showed me a kind of generosity from people who had been through things I can’t begin to understand, and they deserve better than having their whole country written off as dangerous. When I talk about this, I’m talking about what goes on in your head as an outsider living with tensions you don’t fully understand.

Through all of it, you’re still expected to produce. Nobody adjusts the scouting report because you spent the night before wondering whether fighting might break out, and nobody cuts you slack because your family back home has been glued to the news trying to figure out if you’re okay. You still show up for practice twice a day, and you still have to deliver when your name gets called.

I loved playing overseas, and I wouldn’t trade any of it. Looking back, though, it’s pretty fucking wild how many of these situations we just accepted as part of the job.

I think a lot about the players living in countries dealing with unrest right now, and about their families sitting thousands of miles away reading headlines about the place where their son or daughter is trying to make a living. I wonder how many of those athletes have any kind of plan if something goes wrong. I sure as hell didn’t. What I had was a handful of scenarios running on a loop in my head and the hope that I’d never have to find out which one was right.

We spend years getting athletes ready for the pressure of playing professionally, and it’s probably time we spent a little of that energy getting them ready for the places the game ends up sending them.