The Reality of Playing Professional Basketball Overseas
Reasons for taking up the endeavor of going pro are very important. Playing Basketball is a very prestigious occupation, but unfortunately only the top players in the world are getting payed lots of money. It bottoms out pretty quickly. There are really good basketball players starting off with playing for pretty much 500/600$ a month (+ food and housing) just for the opportunity. This is not to mention that the jobs aren’t year-round. You get payed for 7, if lucky 10 months and are off the other 2–5 months with no pay. In these 2–5 months you are expected to get by, get better and stay in shape, since you don’t want to show up to training camp in August and “extend your unpaid vacation” by getting cut.
But even getting to the jobs that pay very small amounts is very hard to come by if you haven’t had an extremely successful college career or have established yourself in Europe as a youngster, since you’ll need an agent or somebody to recommend/offer/represent you to the teams. You might have to go through stuff like illegitimate showcases, fake agents (not FIBA Licensed), pay some scammers, finance plane tickets to go to try outs on bad teams in bad leagues and so forth.
Moving up from those levels isn’t easy either- it takes a lot of luck and right circumstances and actually being really good at basketball to do it. You’ll probably end up in not very respected leagues, where even if you were objectively to be as good as LeBron James, teams in the truly upper tiers wouldn’t pay notice. Advancements are made very slowly and can be halted by injuries, club politics, playing systems that don’t fit your playing style and many more.
This process is really a bet on yourself where you’ll initially might have to go to very “unprofessional” organizations with no physio- strength coach- where potentially what small amount you do get payed comes in late a week/month/in crazy circumstances even 6 months or never gets payed at all. Coaches can be really bad too! There are horrendous stories. From extremely mentally abusive, to people who just simply stumbled into the game and don’t really know a thing about Basketball.
The other thing that most people don’t consider is that most often don’t have much control about where you end up. Due to extremely tough schedules that don’t allow for even a short trip to home, it’s not unusual for players to not see their family and friends months on end.
Some players do get the luxury of being able to bring their family along, however, even this might be a double edged sword, where the player’s partner is stuck being unemployed with nothing to do, but sit at home, due to a language barrier.
The city you get to live in can become a challenge as well. Players can find themselves in small towns with nothing to do but basketball, which, especially during long and challenging seasons, can be extremely mentally draining.
But not everything is so bad.
The obvious advantages are getting to do what you love for a living, the opportunity to self actualize yourself, living and seeing places you would’ve never visited if it weren’t for Basketball and meeting like minded individuals that are going through the same process as you are.
This is no fairytale!
If you truly are good and lucky and find yourself in the right environment, you might move up to one of those upper leagues and find yourself a honeypot, but till then playing for the pure sake of “Love to the Game” is gonna have to cut it for you.