From hilarious travel stories to hard-hitting geopolitics, NBA players have dealt with it all on the road overseas.
Evan Turner’s first big trip internationally came after his rookie season with the 76ers. It wasn’t a huge trip in miles, but it was a massive first step. Turner treated his entire family, everyone, on a trip to the Dominican Republic — and one moment that’s lodged in his mind was hearing his 98-year-old great grandmother see a freshwater canal, saying it was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in her life. A life that had spanned 98 years.
This was really the start of a love of international travel for Turner. Something that he continues to this day. Traveling to Milan and Madrid with the Celtics madeh im realize that the distance between the East Coast and Europe was the same as a trip out to L.A., and from that moment on he made it his mission to get to Europe every single year to experience the culture and way of life outside of the United States.
It’s something Andre Iguodala regrets not taking advantage of sooner, though Iggy is now learning to branch out more with the help of his Point Forward cohost, with Turner and Iguodala going to Italy together.
Iguodala is only five years older than Turner, but he sees a generational difference between the old timers of the NBA and the younger generation when it comes to travel. Iggy quipped about his first trip to Europe, and the amount of complaining NBA players did about things that weren’t the same as the United States.
The 2010 FIBA World Championships was a turning point on travel for Iguodala. The tournament was held in Istanbul, Turkey — and it absolutely blew him away. He know calls the country “one of his favorite on earth.” Of course, he also mentioned casually that Danny Granger’s dad was the victim of an attempted kidnapping for ransom, but that the criminals were too small to pull it off.
A similarly Turner has a weird story about playing in the World University Games as a sophomore, and during a layover in Germany a random man walked up to the team yelling “AMERICANS!” before saying “Michael Jackson just died,” and walking away.
Aside from the funny moments there are some genuinely tough things about traveling overseas as a notable American, particularly in complex geopolitical environments. Turner notes that he played in Belgrade, Serbia just 10 years after the Yugoslav Wars, and was routinely asked by citizens why they were bombed by the United States, to which he didn’t really have a response.
All of these moments, the heartfelt, the surreal, and even the challenging are part of the tapestry of traveling overseas. Everything is about experiencing the unknown, and growing from it. Both Iguodala and Turner agree that without basketball they never would have experienced the world the way they did — and now they appreciate it so much more than they thought possible.
