International Basketball Trip – Day 3 (Greece)

July 1

Earlier I mentioned using basketball as a vehicle. Last night I had dinner at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. For some reason I don’t think that accountants get to do that in their line of work.

Today I have a 4-hour drive to Olympia for the camp. The weather here is hot, not Miami hot, but hot just the same. For some reason I don’t think the air conditioning is Miami air conditioning either.

The trip from Athens to Olympia was about 41/2 hours. The temperature was in the 90s and the car we were driving had no air conditioning. About half the trip was on major highways and the other half on 2 lane roads. I use the term 2 lane roads rather loosely seeing that there were 4 lanes of traffic on those 2 lanes. Drivers here drive half in the breakdown lane and half in the travel lane. This is to allow for cars to pass on another. In the U. S. the lane markings on the road have some meaning, dashed line you can pass, double line you cannot, etc. It did not make a difference what type of line there was on the road, straight road or not. If you came up on a car in front of you, you passed him. There were times I thought we were trying to drive between the headlights of the on coming cars and they were trying to do the same to ours. The drive can only be described as long periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror.

European basketball is much different than U. S. basketball

We arrived at the camp, which is on the top of a mountain about 4000 feet up. I worked for about an hour with a group. European basketball is much different than U. S. basketball. It almost seems like ballet compared to the emphasis on power in the U. S. Their practice habits are also much more leisurely. Of course, the most difficult thing for me to adjust to is the 45 minutes they spend stretching inside an hour and a half basketball workout. That really doesn’t leave a lot of time for work. Players also seem to be much more programmed in the way they do things. Everyone does the same thing and they don’t like to experiment. It has its benefits but I think that experimentation is a key to learning. There are many things that I think the Europeans do better than we do but I think the resistance to other ideas stunts their growth. They also seem to have an emphasis on pleasing the coach. I believe their primary motivation should be to get better, not please me.

Now it is time to make the 3 mile, 20 minute drive down the mountain to relax.

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