February 24, 2004
Basketball's Global Village
Down in Gainesville, Florida men's basketball head coach Billy Donovan is in a bit of fix. One of his key players off the bench, Christian Drejer, a 21-year old sophomore guard from Denmark, has just left Florida forever to play for FC Barcelona back in Spain. He's guaranteed two years at $500,000 per, with an option for a third.
Tom Izzo, head coach at Michigan State, a coach who also recruited Drejer, told ESPN's Andy Katz:
"I feel for Billy," Izzo said. "This is a low blow. It's so insulting. Drejer was a little bit like [former Spartan Erazem] Lorbek. He wasn't their best player and Lorbek wasn't ours. But Lorbek could shoot the pick-and-pop and had a 7-foot, 2-inch wingspan. He was like Drejer in that he was an oddity.
"Drejer was 6-9 but could bring the ball up. He wasn't their best player, but he was one of their best glue guys. He could play different positions and a lot of people won't see the value of him. Like Lorbek, he was a good person, a good kid, too."
A low blow? Insulting? Please.
Don't get me wrong, part of me feels for coaches like Izzo and Donovan, especially when they lose players in the midst of a season like Donovan did with Drejer at Florida. But what we're seeing here is a perfect example of the global marketplace at work.
In the past, elite European basketball players of a certain age looking for top competition didn't have a better option than American college basketball -- but that's simply not the case any longer.
European professional clubs, organized along the lines of the continent's professional Soccer clubs, can not only offer a paycheck, but a life that's comparitively hassle free when compared to the lot of the American student athlete. It begins with being able to concentrate soley on becoming a basketball player, without having to deal with the fiction of going to class. Even better, the European professional outfits don't have busybodies like the NCAA looking over their shoulders -- these athletes are professionals and adults, and get treated like them. That means no pesky regulations regarding when practice starts and ends. It means assistant coaches get paid a living wage. And it means not having to worry about whether a meaningless pickup game might wind up costing you a year of eligibility.
But the real problem for American college basketball has yet to emerge. Because while it's one thing for a European off the bench to bolt for dollars back on the continent, the real explosion is going to occur when an American kid opts for the European professional leagues straight out of high school or even earlier.
These days, the folks at Indiana figure they've always got the inside track on recruiting next year's Mr. Basketball. But it won't be too much longer when they're going to start worrying about scouts from Europe lurking in their gyms with promises of elite basketball training and big bucks, all without the attendant hassles of the NCAA and the fiction of American amateurism.
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