Basketball is a job

Christopher,
thank you for your comment. I will try to answer your questions in the following post.

I did not complete a graduate degree at UVM, because at the time it didnt seem necessary - I did very well in my undergrad studies and could have gotten a job without it. It is very likely, though, that I will pursue a graduate degree after Im finished with basketball. Without it, it will be nearly impossible to find a job I want, especially since Im planning to continue with basketball for another 2 to 3 years (or until the economy starts growing again... what a great time not to be involved in the financial industry right now).
It is interesting to note that Im one of two players on my team (the other being my American teammate) who have an undergraduate degree. In fact, none of my Spanish teammates ever attended college and never will. Playing professional sports in Europe comes at the cost of receiving higher education. Most players begin their professional careers at the age of 17 or 18 (some even sooner), right after they finish HS. By the time they finish playing, it is too late and undesirable to attend college.
The players, however, are well compensated for their commitment to the sport. A normal contract includes, besides the monetary compensation, a house/apartment and car paid for by the team. The payment depends on the league you play in and, of course, how good you are. For instance, the payments in the 3rd league (the league above ours) start somewhere around 25000 Euros per year and range up to 100000 Euros per year; the best players in the top league make up to 1000000 Euros a year and more. You may think that 25000 Euros is not much, but you have to look at it from this angle: you have no monthly payments for house or car and you work about 6 hours a day. If you do the math, you will see that the pay per hour is excellent.
For the players basketball is a regular job. With the money they earn through basketball, they pay their mortgages, car loans and support their families. For example, all of my veteran teammates have already paid off their mortgages and car loans. So even though they may never earn the same amount of money as by playing basketball, they will also never experience the difficulties of monthly debt payments.
So what do players do after they finish their careers? A lot of them remain loyal to the sport: they become coaches, team managers, agents, or get a job in the basketball federation. The others find a job through their network. It is amazing how many influential people you meet through the sport (team managers, sponsors, fans) and how many of them are willing to help.

Life outside the court

Ever wondered what professional athletes do when they are not practicing? The answer is fairly simple: not much!!!
Let me describe an average day. I usually wake up at 9am so I can have a light breakfast before practice at 10am. After practice - around 11:30 - I go with my roommate David "a tomar algo". This spanish term can be literally translated into "take something"; it means to go to a cafe/bar and have a drink of any sort. Afterwards we return to the apartment and I chill out for the remainder of the afternoon (in this time I eat, spend some time on the internet, take a nap, etc.). At 5:40pm we leave the house for evening practice at 6pm. After practice - around 8pm - I go with my roommate "a tomar algo" again. When we return to the house depends on a lot of variables, such as how tired we are, if we meet friends, if we practice in the morning, if we have a game the next day, if we're having a bad day, etc.; thus the point of return is anywhere between 10pm and 5am.
Since we only play once a week on the weekends, all of the days are pretty much the same. It does get pretty boring at times, especially since I dont have to go to class or work. Fortunately I have a great roommate; David is an incredibly funny guy and makes every day interesting. Ill also be taking a spanish course online so that should keep me busy throughout the afternoons. If any of you have read a good book recently, definitely let me know.

The Language Barrier

It is impossible to describe the feeling of complete helplessness when you don’t understand a word and nobody understands you... it is something everyone has to experience for themselves. I will try, however, to give you an idea of how I felt during my first day in Spain.

I was very confident in my language abilities after college (I was able to communicate in 4 different languages), so I didn’t bother learning Spanish over the summer (clearly I had better things to do). The first doubts about possible communication problems occurred to me on my flight from Frankfurt to Madrid. All of the announcements were made in Spanish first (at least I thought it was Spanish; it could have been Italian or Greek and I wouldn’t have known the difference), followed by the German translation. At the time I thought it was pretty funny that I couldn’t understand a word, but soon I realized that the joke was on me.

A man waited for me at the airport (to this day I don’t know what his association to the team is/was). After greeting him in every possible language I could think of, he looked at me awkwardly and asked: Espanyol? I gave him the international sign of no (shaking my head horizontally) to which he responded with the international sign of yes/ok/this is going to be difficult (shaking his head vertically). He motioned with his hand to follow him; the next best option was to fly back home, so I gathered my courage and went with him to his car. After 20 minutes of silence this thought shot into my head: you are sitting in a stranger's car, you cannot communicate with him or anyone in this country, you don’t know where you are going... if he robes and leaves you in the middle of some field, you will never be able to navigate your way out of this!!! It sounds funny, but for the rest of the trip it shivered down my spine.

After two hours we made it to Alcazar and the man dropped me off at my hotel. The lady at the front desk spoke very good English; she showed me my room and told me that someone would pick me up for practice later on. It was so comforting to know that there was someone in the hotel that I could speak with (little did I know that the lady was going on vacation the following day and nobody else in the hotel spoke this language).

After a short nap I decided it was time to get lunch. I took a seat, opened the menu, closed the menu (I couldn’t read anything) and waited for the waiter. The waiter spoke at a rate of 10 words per second and was quiet intimidating. With my clueless expression I tried to communicate the following sentence: Good afternoon, sir, I don’t speak any Spanish but I would like to order something to eat, please. He didn’t get the message and stroke back with another series of quick words. This time I responded with: “no Espanyol, English”, which resulted in more confusion and another series of many foreign words. But I stuck to my story; the waiter quickly realized that shooting Spanish words at me won’t get us anywhere and left. After 5 minutes another waiter approached my table (this one was a lot friendlier – he smiled). He knew about 5 words of English, but it was enough for me to order lunch.

My struggle continued later that evening at practice. When I arrived at the gym, my head coach asked me in Spanish if I spoke Spanish. When I said no, he nodded and didn’t bother speaking to me for the next 3 months (no kidding). All of practice was conducted in Spanish; fortunately one of my teammates was fluent in English and translated everything for me. The off-court conversations and locker-room talks were all in Spanish, so the first couple of weeks I was completely excluded from the team.

By December I understood enough to be self-suficient and learned enough spanish words to carry on a 5 minute conversation. I will be taking an online spanish course this year so hopefully Ill be able to communicate fluently by the end of the season. As an end note, Spanish is a relatively easy and rich language spoken by a lot of people in the world; if anyone is interested in picking up a language, try Spanish.

Alcazar de San Juan

Alcazar de San Juan is a small city (about 30000 inhabitants) about 70 miles south east of Madrid. The city is famous thanks to the the story of Don Quixote; Cervantes wrote the book in Alcazar and a lot of the story happens in this area. This is, unfortunately, the only cultural aspect of the city. The climate here is hot and dry (last year it rained here 8 times... Im serious, I kept a count) and the area is utilized for the growth of wine and olives. As a matter of fact, Im in the most uniteresting area of all Spain. Fortunately for this blog, however, we will be travelling all across Spain this year, so I will describe the different aspects of this country as the year goes on.

Last Year in Review

Last year I played with the same team in the EBA League, the 5th league in Spain. There were about 70 teams in the league, divided into 5 regional divisions. At the end of the year, only 4 teams would move up to the 4th league.

The goal at the beginning of the season was clear: move up to the higher league. To complete this task, the team bought 6 veteran, experienced players. These guys played all of their careers in the top Spanish leagues and were the backbone of our team. The rest of us were young players who hustled everyday in practice and did the dirty work on the court (by veteran I mean 29 and older; by young I mean 24 and younger). Our coach was one of the most renowned and successful coaches in Spanish basketball history. He was the last piece of the puzzle and was supposed to lead us to glory and fame.

From the team standpoint, our season was a big success. We won our division and the playoffs, thus moving up to the next league. We did a lot of celebrating throughout the month of May...
From my individual standpoint it was a learning year. Basketball, just like any other sport, is a game of details; everyone can learn to dribble, shoot, pass, play defense, etc. It is the details, such as movement without the ball, reading the defense, running of screens, cutting and passing at the right time, that differentiate the bad from the good and the good from the best. And it was quickly obvious, pretty much after the first week of practice, that I had a lot to learn (and still do).

Let me assure you that the process of learning the details is very easy, yet very humiliating. Maybe some examples are sufficient at this point:

You are in the post playing defense. Now, if the ball goes over your head (without your notice, of course) and your player scores an easy lay-up, you think to yourself lucky play. But if this happens three times a practice over a span of one week, you realize that it’s not a lucky play, but your inability to play proper defense.

You are playing pick and roll with your wing. At the end of the play your teammate passes you the ball at the most unexpected time and you don’t catch it. The second time this happens, your wing (being a considerate teammate) explains to you that you need to be somewhere else in order to catch the ball. The third time you don’t catch it, your wing tells you that he just wont pass you the ball no more (trust me, he didn’t pass me the ball for the rest of the day). The next day it’s the same story, except that my wing didn’t pass me the ball after the first time I didn’t catch the pass (he was still a considerate teammate though).

I think you get the idea. I was very fortunate last year because I was with experienced players who taught me how to play and with a coach who thought I was worthy of playing a lot of minutes. In the end it was a good year for me: I averaged about 20 minutes a game, I got better as the year moved on, and the team decided to sign me for another year.

Welcome to my Blog!

I would like to welcome everyone to my blog. My name is Martin Klimes and I just started my second season as a professional basketball player in Spain.

The intention is to illustrate and bring you closer to the life of a professional athlete. I am happy to talk about anything that may be of interest to you, so please don’t hesitate and send me any questions or comments you have; the more input I receive, the better my pots will become.
Thank you for your participation and enjoy.