This week in Caner-Medley’s Corner, Nik gives us an inside look at what it’s like to go through the grind of a road trip.
Except that this isn’t like most road trips for professional sports, because Nik’s team is located so far away from the rest of the teams in the league in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The team is so remote from the rest of the league, that they were granted an extended holiday break to help them recover from the grind of all the traveling. No other team in the league was given the extended break.
Nik wrote this while flying over Lithuania with his team on their way back to Astana after two games in Europe. It’s my favorite entry from him so far:
One of the perks to playing in Europe is the constant traveling. Astana is far away from all the teams we play against so all of our road games require at least a few connections at different airports.
We just finished a road trip that took us to Riga, Latvia and Helsinki, Finland.
We left Astana and flew six hours to Frankfurt, Germany where we had a four hour lay over. I’m at the point where I have traveled throughout Europe so much that I have favorite airports and places to go and eat and shop in certain ones. Frankfurt is one of my favorites so I was happy about the long lay over.
Most of my teammates hate the long flights and layovers. Although I don’t hold it against them because they most likely don’t know about the amazing pretzel spot in terminal D or the sushi spot in terminal E, the ignorance!
After the layover, we flew from Frankfurt to Riga, about three hours, and stayed at a nice hotelover looking downtown. It was my second time in Riga and it’s actually a surprisingly nice city. It has an old architecturevibe- picture a bigger downtown Portland, with a few nice modern buildings.
When we arrive in these cities we usually get to the hotel and have a few hours to rest and then go to the gym for an hour and a half practice to sweat out the trip.
In most cases we play the next day so we wake up and have a light shoot around in the morning and some scout video, followed by lunch. Our games are at night so we have “nap time” after we eat and head to the gym about two hours prior to tip off.
Road wins are tough to come by over here with the travel and time zone changes, along with the fact that most of gyms are packed with a college game atmosphere. So home court is a true advantage in Europe.
We ended up pulling out an important win and headed back to the hotel feeling good.
The night after games comes with a variety of choices. You can eat at the hotel and get rest for the flight in the morning or you can go out and see what the nightlife of any given city has to offer.
“Back in the day” I would always see what the night life had to offer. Generally these are experiences that you would be selling yourself short if you didn’t get out for, but now that I’m 31 I put a premium on getting my rest and taking care of my body.
So I’m usually the first guy back in my room watching tv or just hanging out… to my friends back home reading this- don’t give me that “come on Medley” either. Part of being a professional is making certain sacrifices and that’s the bottom line.
We flew from Riga to Helsinki and when we arrived had to take a three hour bus to a place that I honestly don’t know the name of. All I can tell you is the town had four thousand people max and we played our game in a high school gym, literally.
It was a first in my professional career, I felt like I was back in high school playing at Massabesic or something!
This team came ready to play and we came out flat and got beat. It was a close game but we never really got our legs under us and paid the price.
On the bright side, splitting with a win and a loss on a long road trip isn’t the end of the world in reality. We have our next three games in the VTB league at home so I’m not overly concerned about the split.
Coming off the two week Christmas break, most of our guys went home and I anticipated a slow start to the New Year because a mid-season break like that has its pros and cons.
We were the only team in the league with that long of a break because our team president convinced the league commissioner that we needed it because our travel is so much further than the other teams in our league due to how far east Astana is located.
We are currently en route back to Astana, I’m writing to you from 35,000 ft somewhere over Lithuania most likely.
We left early this morning (thursday) and drove back to Helsinki. We took a flight back to Frankfurt, had another four hour layover, and are now headed six hours back to Astana where we arrive 5am Friday.
In other words, a pretty long day.
I’m going to get some sleep, when we land we have a few hours to unpack and I’ll pick up my dog Angel from the dog hotel they have before practice at night.
We leave again at 430am Sunday morning to head to Italy for the first game of the Eurochallenge Final 16, and to watch the Patriots game! Hope this finds everyone back home doing well, sending my love!