EEBS – Pula, Croatia

The Elite European Basketball Showcase in Pula, Croatia was one of my favorite pro camps. Pula is a beautiful town, the weather was great, and I had/ made some fans out there, which is the most memorable part of the whole experience.

Another reason was that my team’s roster worked out for me to play point guard/ playmaker for my club, which is exactly what I wanted but don’t always get the chance to play because of my size and physical abilities. At 6’4″ I’m rarely the shortest guy on my club, and being that I can jump well, have long arms and rebound a lot I often can end up as a 2 or even 3 on some teams.

The EEBS drew my attention because it was a week-long camp, as opposed to most camps’ format of 3-4 games crammed into 48 hours. The EEBS was 4 practices, 4 games, even morning shoot-around sessions. Each team had a coach; we installed and ran plays. The spread-out, long format, to me, makes it easier to evaluate players and get a clear feel for what everyone can and can’t do.

I stayed in a double room in the camp hotel with my Serbian roommate — he didn’t snore and kept the bathroom clean, so in my book: great guy (he’s the shorter of the two really tall guys I’m pictured with below). All I did in our room was shower, eat, and read (and spend an entire day sleeping — see the last paragraph); the small TV had no English channels and the hotel lacked wi-fi. I did manage to finish this book (I get a ton of reading done when I’m out of the USA — no ESPN/ American sports channels and no in-house Internet are most responsible for this).

The hotel was a 10-minute walk from the venue where the games and practices were held; the post- walk was my dread as the week went on. The hotel had a breakfast spread every morning. If you’ve been in or are from Europe you know what it’s like: scrambled eggs, bacon strips, dry oatmeal, a big bowl of fruit, some pastries. These spread always feel more like a snack than a meal to me but I make do. We had meal vouchers for lunch at a restaurant that was close to the gym; I learned to tailor my meal selections to fit into the cash allowance of the vouchers after having to pay the overages out-of-pocket a time or two. For dinner you were on your own; I dined at a close-by restaurant a couple times (asking for “potatoes” gets you french fries; “vegetables” yields a salad. Ketchup is not free. Did you know that only we Americans use salad dressing? Only choices were oil and vinegar… yuck). I broke down and had some fried chicken and fries one night, even some McDonald’s the day after the camp (tasted exactly the same).

Pula is a calm, quiet town for the most part, with a lot of tourists and attractions (see the Roman colosseum photos I took below). Pula is a beach/ resort town right on the Mediterranean Sea with great weather — not too warm and always sunny. There was a farmer’s market- type open space every day in the center of town (also free wi-fi in the town center… which did not work); all kinds of fruits, veggies, herbs & spices available. I even managed to find an Internet cafe that allowed me to avoid Web Withdrawal. The people of Pula didn’t seem to surprised to see a couple tall Black guys walking around town (there were many more European players than Americans here).

I felt fantastic when I first got to Pula, and a humid gym and lack of fluids caught up to me by the third day of the camp — I ended up in an emergency room with an IV in my arm (officially diagnosed as exhaustion/ dehydration). Coupled with a strained hamstring, I missed a full day of the camp and was about 60% of myself in the three games in which I did participate. Despite that situation, I wouldn’t change a thing about the experience and I plan to see Pula again.

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