It seems almost with the passing of each hour, another NBA player is talking about heading overseas to play basketball as a result of the three-week-old lockout, the end of which could be months away.
And each time an American player signs a contract with a European team, there’s the possibility he could be taking a job away from a U.S. colleague who is making a living on the international fringes, in the hopes of getting an opportunity to display his talents on the game’s brightest stage.
For former UNO and Warren Easton High School swingman Kyndall Dykes, however, the credentials burnished last season in the Romanian league — Dykes was Eurobasket.com’s Romanian League Player of the Year — provide a sense of job security, no matter who might end up on the roster next season.
Dykes, who was also the Romanian League’s Import Player of the Year as he led U-Mobitelco Cluj Napoca to the Division A championship, finished with a 20.2-points-per-game average and shot 63 percent. He said this week he’s unconcerned with the NBA exodus that appears to be growing.
“At this point,” Dykes said, “for this season, it’s not a concern because I know where I’m going. But as far as if the lockout continues and a lot of guys come overseas, it could be a concern in the future, maybe next season, because a lot of guys might try to stay. And that could cut down on some jobs for people.”
The Romanian League season, for example, uses the same October-to-June calendar the NBA customarily follows, as do most of the European leagues. All leagues limit the number of non-native roster spots. In Romania, teams are allowed to have just six foreign players, but only five can be active for games and four can be on the court at a time, leaving the fifth floor spot to a native Romanian.
For U.S. agents such as Mark Bartelstein, who already has landed former Hornets forward Darius Songaila overseas and Thursday was ready to do the same with a group of Indiana Pacers players, including former Hornets forward James Posey, it could be a fine line to walk.
Do Bartelstein and other agents continue to make overseas deals for NBA players at the possible expense of players they already represent in Europe?
Bartelstein this week said it’s not an issue.
“There’s a lot of teams in Europe, so many teams, that there are a lot of jobs open over there,” he said. “Our job is to find the best opportunity for all of our players over there. That’s what we’re doing. We don’t really find it to be a conflict. There’s more players on the market, there’s no question about that.
“There are guys looking to go overseas who normally wouldn’t look to overseas. But we don’t look at it as a conflict or anything like that. Most of the NBA guys who are going over there, it’s really high-level teams. I know what you’re getting at. But I don’t really think it’s going to be a problem. There are enough jobs to go around for everybody. It really hasn’t been a problem yet.”
What NBA stars who are unaccustomed to European conditions might experience, however, could be eye-opening. Former Hornets forward Ryan Bowen recalled in an interview two years ago that conditions when he played in Turkey — the current desired destination for players such as the Nets’ Deron Williams, who already has signed to play there, and rumored landing spot for the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant — were far from the five-star situations to which they’re accustomed.
“We had this little house we all went to the night before we played games,” Bowen recalled. “We played in Istanbul. It housed the whole team — 15 or 20 of us, including the coaches. All stayed in this one house. We had mattresses on the floor. There were no sheets. Nothing. I didn’t know enough to bring my own sheets. All the other guys pulled out their sheets. We stayed in this house that had no heat. It was freezing cold.
”The dogs were barking outside, random stray dogs, all night. I’m thinking the night before a game, here I am on a mattress sleeping in my full clothes with my winter jacket. I just remember the dogs barking all night long. I remember thinking ‘How in the world am I going to play a game tomorrow?’ It was nothing to them. They expect it. That’s what they did. I could go on and on. I’ll never forget that one night, sleeping in my clothes and winter jacket, listening to the dogs barking.”
Dykes, a 6-foot-3 shooting guard/small forward who was an All-Sun Belt Conference selection at UNO and an All-Metro player at Easton, was one of three Americans on his team’s roster this year, along with two Serbians by season’s end.
Although the daily headlines announce another looming NBA defection, Dykes says there’s room for everyone.
“A lot of guys are going to come,” he said. “But I don’t think it’ll be a long-term issue with the NBA guys. The lockout is going to end, and they’re going back. As far as this season, it may be a problem for guys who might take pay cuts and have to get side jobs to stay on overseas.
“But long-term, I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Those guys just want to play basketball. When the NBA comes back, those guys are going to go back.”
