Athletes go the distance to compete

Greg Miller, BE ’01, did not have road trips like this when he played for the Blue Hens.

He and his current teammates recently made a journey of more than six hours to a basketball game in the German capital of Berlin. Not only did the former UD player have to travel across the heartland of Germany, but there ended up being a return trip that same night.

“Nobody is renting hotels in Berlin. We get back on that bus and head back home right after the game,” notes Miller, who graced Delaware’s hardwood from 1997-2001.

Welcome to life in the third division of German pro basketball.
In his most recent season, Miller was averaging about 18 points and 2.5 assists per game, playing for the Proveo Merlins club in Crailsheim, a town of about 35,000 residents an hour east of Stuttgart in the southern part of the country.
“It’s cool. It reminds me of college, since it’s so small and everybody knows me,” says Miller, who is spending his third season with Crailsheim and his sixth playing in Europe. “We’re the main thing to do in town on Saturday. We get about 1,000 fans, and they have a good time.”

Miller is one of several former Blue Hen basketballers who have kept their hoop dreams alive by going overseas to play for pay. On top of continuing to play basketball for a living, the former Delaware students get a chance to see other parts of the world while following the bouncing ball.

Jamal Basit, BE ’01, a former teammate of Miller’s at UD (where he was known by his given name, Ajmal), has played seven seasons as a pro in Germany. In addition to Basit and Miller, other former Blue Hens playing overseas as 2008 began included Mamadou Diouf, CHS ’02, in Japan; Kestutis Marciulionis, BE ’00, in Spain; Harding Nana, CHEP ’06, in Poland; and Ndongo N’diaye, BE ’02, in Syria, according to [www.usbasket.com], a Web site that tracks players and news of professional basketball worldwide.

On the women’s side, Arek Deng, AS ’06, is in England and Tyresa Smith, CHS ’07, played briefly in Russia before leaving in December 2007 for the WNBA Detroit Shock. Former UD star Tiffany Young, CHS ’05, played in Germany during the 2005-06 season.

Other recent players from the UD women’s program to play overseas include Allison Trapp, AS ’04, current UD assistant coach Tiara Malcom, CHEP ’05, and Cindy Johnson, AS ’01, who played in Iceland and Spain earlier this decade. They are among several standouts who starred for the Hens under Head Coach Tina Martin and Associate Head Coach Jeanine Radice.

Trapp played four seasons overseas after graduating from UD with a degree in history.

She split her first season abroad between Israel and Luxembourg, played her second year in Turkey, her third year in Greece and her final year, 2006-07, again in Turkey.

“Initially I went to Israel, and it was a huge culture shock” because of the dangers of war and terrorism, Trapp says. “You go into a supermarket, and they pat you down. It took a lot of getting used to. But if you can play for Coach Martin, you can do anything.”

She had the chance to play overseas in 2007-08, but her father died recently and Trapp says she wanted to be closer to her mother in Philadelphia.

Malcom, who earned a degree in family and community services, now has completed two seasons as an assistant coach for UD. As a player, she overcame a partial hearing loss to become a four-year standout for the Blue Hens, where she was a three-time all-CAA selection and the league player of the year in 2005. Malcom scored 1,545 points at Delaware and set a school and CAA record with 535 free throws made.

The Wilmington, Del., native played professionally during the 2005-06 season in Barreiro, Portugal, with the GD ESSA Basketball Club.

“After we played our last game [at UD], Coach Martin gave me a list of agents,” Malcom says. “I went through it with my parents. Once I got my agent, he shopped me to teams.”

Malcom attracted attention from teams in Sweden and Israel, but she decided to play in Barreiro, a town about 20 minutes from the capital of Lisbon. She had not been overseas until she went to Portugal, where she became a tourist as well as a professional athlete.

“It was such an adjustment for me,” she says. “It was so different. I saw a lot of castles in Portugal.”
Johnson, another athlete who has since returned to the United States, is now splitting her time between Virginia, where she has an AAU and sports training business, and Utah, where she is working on a 104,000-square-foot sports training facility. She says she has good memories of her time playing abroad

“Many people don’t believe that I enjoyed myself while in Iceland,” she says. “Although the cold was nothing I had ever experienced before, my location and teammates made my time there very enjoyable. I was less than five minutes from the Blue Lagoon and about 20 minutes away from Reykjavik, which is the capital city.”

Johnson never made it to the WNBA, despite a few tryouts, but she seems to have few regrets.
“I appreciate everything that Tina and Jeanine did to help me experience post-graduate play. I am one that can actually say that I was afforded the opportunity to play at every level of the game,” she says. “I think it has put me somewhat ahead of the curve.”

Ahead of the curve is certainly not what all American players feel when they begin their pro careers in Europe. Upon his arrival in the Old Country in 2001, Miller had to deal with a new set of basketball rules, including a wider trapezoid lane, a 3-point line that’s farther back from the basket and refs who monitor traveling much more strictly than in America.
The main problem, Miller admits, was the different style of play: “The style was more physical than in college. It’s not American football, but you get held and pushed a lot.”

His former Delaware teammate agrees. “It gets physical in the lane,” says Basit, who says the major difference in Europe is the mentality, tactics and strategies of the game. “If we‘re leading by one point late, coaches here will foul the other team to have the ball for the last shot. Coaches in the States would never give an opposing team free throws to have the last shot.”
Most North American players in Europe are paid a tax-free salary by their club and are provided free housing. Many top foreigners also are given the free use of a car and a meal allowance. Leagues in western Europe generally pay better than those in eastern Europe, with some of the best leagues found in France, Spain and Italy. Few American players venture to such countries as Romania or Serbia, where most teams cannot afford North American imports.

Miller and Basit have faced each other on three occasions during their time in Germany, including twice in the 2002-03 season. Miller, now playing in the same country as Basit, says he is continually amazed at how small the basketball world is.

“One and a half years before that first meeting [against Basit in Germany], I was dropping passes into him at Delaware, and now I was jumping into him and trying to draw fouls,” he says.

Still, despite the sometimes difficult adjustments to living and competing in Europe, Miller says there’s one big compensation: “I’m still playing basketball and doing what I love.”

by David Driver and David Hein