Overseas Book Recommendations

The game will end. What you build in your mind while you're playing it will not. Here are 4 books every overseas athlete should have in their bag. We're dropping a new reading list every month. Follow so you don't miss the next one.

Overseas Famous: The Travels and Tribulations of a Basketball Globetrotter by Kevin Owens. Yup…this is me being selfish as hell, but this one has to lead the list. It is the most direct blueprint available for understanding what overseas professional life actually looks and feels like, written by someone who lived it across 16 countries over nine years….me. No theory, no secondhand accounts, just the real thing.

The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. Overseas life is a constant obstacle course. Delayed contracts, language barriers, coaches who don't play you, cities where you don't speak the language and can't read a sign. Holiday's framework, rooted in Stoic philosophy, gives athletes a mental structure for turning those situations into fuel rather than frustration.

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. Your network is your career overseas. The agent who calls you first, the teammate who recommends you to his next club, the GM who remembers your name from a conversation two years ago, those relationships are the difference between working and not working. This book teaches you how to build them intentionally.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Every overseas athlete is on a personal legend whether they frame it that way or not. Coelho's story speaks directly to the experience of leaving everything familiar in pursuit of something most people around you cannot understand. It is a short read that tends to hit differently when you are actually living the journey.