The Overseas Wall

There’s a wall that every American player hits when they first go overseas. That moment when you realize everything you thought you knew about basketball…and life, just changed.

For me, that hit me square in the chest in Poland.

I’d come straight out of the NBA D-League, full of that American confidence. I’d been playing against NBA level guys for years, and genuinely thought I was built for it.

And then Poland happened.

I was dropped into a quiet, gray town where I didn’t know a single person. My apartment was isolated from the rest of the town. I didn’t know the language, I knew exactly zero people, I had no car, no friends, and no real idea how to live in that world. The team gave me a driver who brought the same lasagna from the same restaurant every night like I was in the movie, Groundhog Day.

No one spoke English. My teammates barely looked at me. Social media wasn’t a thing back then. I had just a prepaid phone card I used to call home when I could catch the right time zone. The silence was brutal.

I was homesick and lonely and I grew bitter.

And that bitterness started leaking into everything. Practice, games…my attitude. I wasn’t a bad teammate, but I wasn’t exactly a good one either. I didn’t adapt. I expected the world around me to bend to what I was used to. I thought they’d adjust to me because I was the “import.”

That’s the rookie mistake right there. I was the import, but not yet important.

Playing overseas, you’re not walking into your system. You’re walking into theirs. It’s a different system and a different basketball philosophy.

I didn’t get that back them. I was frustrated my teammates didn’t pass me the ball where I wanted it. I was frustrated they didn’t seem to want me there. I was frustrated that my coach barely spoke to me. I didn’t see that I was the outsider who hadn’t earned their trust yet.

I didn’t realize that overseas, shit isn’t handed to you. That you need to build trust. 

But I didn’t have the patience then. I let my frustration boil until the team finally let me go. I remember sitting on that flight home, somehow in coach, wondering how the hell I’d gone from the cusp of the NBA to being back at square one.

It hurt…but I needed it.

That trip home was my reset button. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I came to a realization…I wasn’t there to make Poland fit my expectations. I was there to fit into Poland.

It sounds simple now, but it changed everything.

The next time I signed overseas, my mindset flipped. I didn’t show up expecting the coach to cater to my style. I watched, listened, and learned. I found a way to connect, even when I didn’t understand half the words people were saying. I started eating what the locals ate, showing up early, staying late, asking questions.

I became a sponge.

That shift was huge. I learned to survive when I was lonely and uncomfortable. I learned to adapt.

Now I look back and see how necessary it was. I needed to fail to figure out how to survive. Every vet has that Aha Moment like losing your passport or blowing up at a coach. For me, it was learning that attitude and entitlement don’t translate across borders.

Now, when I see rookies overseas struggling, I get it. I’ve been there. And I tell them the same thing:

“You’re not supposed to be comfortable. You’re supposed to learn how to adapt.”

That’s the most important part of the overseas experience.

Looking back, that lasagna wasn’t the enemy and neither was Poland. The enemy was my me and my shitty mindset. I went in expecting the experience to be familiar, when in reality, the beauty of playing overseas is that it isn’t.

That rookie season was the best worst thing that could’ve happened to me. It humbled me, but made me hungry. It taught me that being successful overseas means being adaptable, patient, and resilient in ways you never thought you’d need to be.

And that lesson carried me through a decade of flights, languages and locker rooms.

The rookie move was thinking everyone should adjust to me, the vet move was realizing I had to adjust to them, and it only took a few rough months to learn that lesson the hard way.