Professional Basketball Overseas: 2009

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Peter Robert Casey's 150 Reasons to love the game of basketballo

Thursday, July 9, 2009

This was blog written by Peter Robert Casey

150 Reasons to love the game of basketball

', '')" onmouseout="addthis_close()" onclick="return addthis_to()" class="snap_noshots" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(255, 65, 8); background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; ">

In spirit of my 150th blog entry, I decided to canvass theTwittersphere and probe my Facebook friends list to come up with "150 reasons to love the game of basketball."

For those of you who share in my addiction of Dr. Naismith'screation, the aggregated and alphabetized list below should keep you sleeping soundly at night. Obviously, by no means exhaustive, I ask you to please leave YOUR unlisted reasons for loving the game in the comments section below.

And, if you don't mind, please share this list with fellow hoops junkies. Many thanks to all who had participated.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

My Hoop Journey (PART 1) The Beginning

In junior high I fell in love with basketball. My good friend (Darroll Phillips, NCAA2, CCAA FT record holder) moved to my hometown and became my "partner-in-hoop." (along with other friends, but no one was as competitive as him) We would stay after school everyday in 8th grade playing 1 on 1 for hours (I'm talking about 3 hours straight). A local man, Rob Gray, who loved basketball as much as us began to work us out seeing potential. This is really when I understood that I could have whatever I wanted in hoop as long as I put in the time and my work ethic was molded and ingrained in me when I saw the improvement.

In high school I played on a very good team at Atascadero High School. Our freshmen year we only lost once. So the next year we were all sophomores and the varsity coach (Jerry Tamelier) moved our whole 4 out of the 5 starters up to varsity along with an incoming Freshman. This was a great move by him. Although we had a mediocre season as sophomores everyone got a lot of experience except for me really, but I didn't deserve as much playing time as the others who all started.

So what now? It was probably one of the best off-seasons I can remember. The workouts moved from the outdoor courts of the junior high to a fitness club (Kennedy Club Fitness). This became the mecca of hoop in the small town of Atascadero. The next year I became a starter and helped boost our team to a league championship and 3rd place in CIF southern section losing to Artesia. I was a point guard back then and was the ultimate team player not even taking a 1 shot in some games (which really did hurt me in getting recruited), but I wasn't thinking about that then.

By being league champs, winning 20 games, and returning all starters we all were very excited about the next season. We had a team full of hoopers. The next season was looking very promising....Until the next post

Monday, July 13, 2009

Chris Duhon Discusses Overseas Hoop

American Limit on Overseas Teams

Almost every professional basketball league outside of the U.S. has a limit on the number of Americans it can have on each team. There are pros and cons for these teams to increase and decrease the allotted number. For example, the top league in Germany (BBL) had no limit on the number of Americans that were allowed on each team last season. This is good for the league as far as increasing the level of play and competition. Also, this helped increase the level of athleticism which helps to sell tickets (be honest, it's better to watch a team full of Lebron James' over a team full of John Stocktons). The lower level you go to the lower number of Americans are permitted. Some low level leagues have rules on how many Euros have to be on the court at one time and have maximums of how many Americans can play together at once (this makes coaching a lot more difficult as you can imagine). So, why did the BBL lower the number down to 8, which is still much higher than most leagues?

If you are an American you are probably thinking, "Yeah, what the hell, that's not fair at all, THERE IS NO LIMIT ON FOREIGNERS IN THE NBA!" Now think about it from a European basketball enthusiast's point of view. Basketball is not very popular at all over there. They need to protect their players and keep them employed. T

hey don't have the great system that we have here in the U.S. as far as player development. For us, we start playing at a competitive level in the 6th or 7th grade in middle school. The best athletes in the U.S. might excel at basketball and choose it as their sport of choice. The best athletes in Europe might excel at basketball, but will probably choose soccer as their sport of choice, or not even give basketball a chance. Anyways, putting a limit on Americans give Euros more motivation to choose basketball and help protect basketball in there country (In all seriousness, the best athletes in Denmark play HANDBALL! I know crazy!).

If you have looked into European ball you have probably noticed that some players are listed as Bosmans. These are players with dual citizenship. I highly recommend doing this if you can. I know of NCAA division 1 players who had great college careers not able to sign a contract overseas and then see NAIA division 2 guys who didn't even start on their teams get signed and have long careers because they can get that dual citizenship (not saying that NAIA D2 players are not good, but if you compare a D1 killer to an NAIA bench player I think you would agree). I am not sure exactly what it takes to get a foreign passport, but I think you must be 1/4 of the nationality that you are trying to get the passport for. This means that your mom of dad is 1/2 and your grandparents are full. They might of had to have a passport from there as well. This is something you should research before you graduate college so you can have it and be as the agents say "Passport Ready!"

This topic goes way deeper, but I know you probably don't have time to read 100 pages, so post any questions you have and leave your opinion on what you think is the right number of Americans to have on a team overseas.

Bad Economy Impacts Basketball

How the Crisis Impacts Basketball Agents

Behind the Scenes

Our friend Kristian Santiago has written a very interesting piece about the current situation that basketball agents face in Europe. Enjoy the read and get some information from inside the basketball business.

The agent business in Europe is a tough business.

Getting teams to sign your player, to negotiate a deal that implements on-time payment and diverse extras such as cars, apartments and bonuses and to handle problems of players (i.e. when your player ends up in a fight in a club…) is not what you call an easy job.

It might get even tougher for these guys in the shadows during the global recession.

I recently asked several European agencies for their opinion on the financial crisis and its effects on their daily business.

The answers came in plenty and gave me a good insight on the situation of most agencies here on the old continent.

Gasper Bizjak and Goran Gramatikov of Global Sports Plaza quickly responded:

Our agency is growing year by year and world recession didn’t affect on securing our clients (players and coaches both male and female) with quality jobs much, but it sure did on player salaries and consequently also on agent fees.

The biggest problem has become tardiness in paying players and agents.

The same was recognized by another big agency:

Many teams had problems paying player salaries after January, and due to that, agent fees were on the very bottom of the priority list. Many teams who did not qualify for the playoffs tried to save a month’s salary by selling their players, but there were no buyers, only sellers.

To make a long story short: Many European teams were not able to fulfill their obligations toward their players and toward the agents.

So most agents suffered even more from the financial crisis then the players they represent, as agent fees were cut before teams decided to cut off payments to players as well.

Other agents decided to place its players in South America, where the situation appears more stable. Says Stefano Lips of Kingstone Basketball:

Lately, we have developed a stronger presence in South America where we have found good financial availability and timely payments.

What’s more interesting is that the outlook for the upcoming season in the European leagues is coupled with reduction of players’ salaries due to the immense cuts of most budgets.

Global Sports Plaza shares their view of the near future:

Recession didn’t and won’t hurt top-level players much, as they are holding their price but will surely effect medium-level players by 20% or even 50% salary cuts from previous seasons.

Lots of players will now stay in their domestic leagues, as the money offered abroad compared to the money at home will be the same or even in favor of the home-based offers. Before the 2008/09 season, we were witnesses to several transfers of NBA players to Europe (we are talking about players that played important roles within their teams) and most likely the majority of them is going to return to the NBA for the 2009/10 season. Even though they get great money here, they are just not keen on late payment.

The 2009-2010 season will be an interesting season for all of us (players, clubs and agents), as always in tough situations, only the ones survive who are able to adjust to a new situation quicker.

Another big agency writes:

For next season, we expect 10% of all European teams to vanish (they will go bankrupt and withdraw from the league). Of the remaining clubs, 90% will lower their annual budgets by 20-80%. For players, it is normal to expect a raise every year.

The combination of this expectation and the lower team budgets will lead to a very long and hot summer in which a record number of players may fire their agents (for not getting them a raise) and finding themselves unemployed when the season starts.

And finally Stefano Lips of Kingstone Basketball, who sounds more confident about the future:

I don’t see the number of transactions being reduced, maybe just modified, as some leagues are allowing more imports to play and want their national players to obtain more playing time and consideration. For Bosmans, outside of their home league, this may reduce their market possibilities. As far as contracts are concerned, it is widely known that clubs will be reducing budgets by at least 15-20%, if not more. Still, some teams want to stay competitive and will be finding a way to increase their budgets. Personally, I don’t believe we will see a big drop off.

The conclusion for me and probably a lot of you is that player salaries are supposed to drop and some clubs will be disappearing.

Not a rosy picture is being drawn by these agents. Also, expect some high-profile players to sign for significantly less to a big team at the last minute after waiting all summer for a big-time offer to appear. The value of a homegrown player is going to rise and their salaries might also do so while U.S. players are facing a drop in salary due to changes on the market which may include less use of imported players in Europe.

Also, do not expect to see another mediocre NBA player receiving larger paychecks in Europe than in the NBA, as players such as Nenad Krstic and Bostijan Nachbar, among others, faced delays in payment of their salaries, which has happened all across Europe no matter if it was Spain, Italy, Greece or Russia. This tendency is surely going to scare off current NBA players and might lead some of Europe’s finest over the ocean…

Only time will tell how teams, players and agents will handle these financial circumstances, but the coming year(s) might be crucial for European basketball and its chosen direction towards more professionalism in the sport.

written by Kristian Santiago

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Eurobasket

If you found this blog then I am sure you are familiar with Eurobasket.com. What you might not know though is that every team displays their contact information as well. This is one way I have used to contact teams. I would say that 90% of them don't respond and probably don't even read the email I send, but that still leaves 10% of them that do. You are not going to get a contract doing this, but hey, the more people that see your name and resume the better.

I mostly use Eurobasket to see what teams sign players and to view how many players ceratin leagues allow etc. Just spending time on that site has helped me learn a lot about overseas ball. You can sign up for different subscriptions there. I have used all of them througout my life so far, but the main one I use is the profile provider option which allows your profile to be displayed on the site for a certain amount of time. One thing most people overlook is the forum offered on the site. It is free and you can get any questions answered through this. The main "replyer" in the forum is Scoutcoach. He will most likely be the one to respond to you.

Eurobasket also offers many other things like contact info for agents, (which I will discuss in another blog) job market, and does not only cover Europe but Latin America, Asia and the Oceania countries!

Go ahead and check it now!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Welcome to this blog site!

Hi,

I am starting this blog site to discuss overseas basketball. I want to talk about what it takes to get there, personal experiences, and any other related topics.

My name is Augie Johnston and I am one of the many players that are trying their best to get a contract to play professional basketball overseas. I just graduated from college. I went to California State University at Monterey Bay. This is a NCAA division 2 school. I had a pretty interesting career there and will definitely be blogging about it at times.

If you are interested in my career or want to know what worked or didn't work for me this is a great site for you to keep checking up on. I will blog once a week or more. Stay posted!

Also, please reply with any questions you might have. I have learned a lot about how overseas basketball works and am well informed.

Augie

P.S. I am posting this blog all the way from Copenhagen, Denmark! (that's in Europe for you uninformed)

Professional Basketball Overseas