Lance Williams Interview (Chicago Suntimes)

[*Unreal*]

evo jedan socan intervju koji je dao najbolji kosarkas sarajevske bosne Lance Williams za CHicago Suntimes (na engleskom je pa ko voli nek izvoli)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- When Lance Williams arrived in Sarajevo last August to play basketball for the Bosna BH Telecom club, he didn't know what to expect from this former war zone. But everything seemed normal: The mostly rebuilt Bosnian capital, a dangerous and deadly place during the 1992-1995 war, now lies peacefully in its mountain valley. Williams quickly settled into his apartment. The team fed him two meals a day, and squired him to and from practice in the team station wagon. Some 10 years after the guns fell silent, however, Williams discovered that Bosnia has at least one postwar hazard. ''We went away to training camp for 21 days, and the general manager called us on the phone and said, 'Your car's been stolen,''' he said. Car thievery aside, the 6-9, 24-year-old center, an alum of Julian High School and DePaul, sees Bosnia as a step up from his last two overseas jobs in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. He's playing in one of Europe's better leagues. And he's getting a crash course on the details of the war, which pitted Bosnia's Croats, Muslims and Serbs against each other and left some 200,000 people dead.
''I didn't know nothin' about the war till now, and that's bad -- I went to college!'' he says, laughing. His teammates have filled him in. ''They tell me where the [front] line was, and if we go somewhere they say, 'Those bullet holes here are from the war, this building here is closed because of the war.''' The scars of war aren't the only reason that playing in the Adriatic Basketball Association Goodyear League is intense. Eight thousand fans crowd Sarajevo's Skenderija sports hall at Bosna's home games, stamping, shouting and roaring with approval when Williams is introduced before the game.
''The crowd is mad crazy. It's not the NBA, but the fans treat it like it is,'' said Williams, who's averaging 15.2 points and 5.9 rebounds. ''But they throw things on the court. If you're drinking this [pointing to his half-empty glass Coke bottle] and you think the ref made a bad call, it'll be on the court. I've had to duck.'' Dodging the hail of lighters, cell phone batteries and other pocket flotsam that the rowdy fans rain down on the court is just part of the adventure. Away games mean long bus rides. Yesterday's wars and sanctions, and today's nonexistent economic recovery, mean that the region's roads are not for the weak of heart. The 200-mile drive from Sarajevo to Belgrade, for example, takes around six hours on the two-lane, potholed mountain roads.
Sports are not immune to the wartime hangover. Dozens of people were injured three years ago when a Bosnia-Serbia soccer match in Sarajevo erupted into a riot. Basketball fans, though, are generally more controlled than soccer hooligans. Fans of Serbian teams such as Red Star and Partizan simply don't turn out in large numbers when their teams play in Sarajevo.
Within Bosnia-Herzegovina, Williams says the only trouble he's had has been in the smallish burg of Siroki Brijeg, two hours southwest of Sarajevo. ''It's on the Croatian border, and they think they're Croatians, and the fans spit on me, they throw things on my head -- they're like village people,'' he says, shaking his head.
The fact that Williams has signed with a Bosnian team shouldn't be unusual to people who know European basketball. The countries that emerged from Yugoslavia's wreckage -- Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia -- have long basketball traditions. Currently, 21 players from the region are on NBA teams. Williams says the competition is good here, even though it's not uncommon to see players in their late teens -- players that Williams steamrolls. One of Bosna's young players seems to be glad that Williams is on their side. ''It's a big score for Bosna -- he's an exceptional player, one of the best centers in the Goodyear League,'' says Danko Delibasic, who at 18 is in his second season as a Bosna guard, even though he's still in high school. ''And he's a great guy -- we spend a lot of time together, have lunch or dinner together, we go out together.''
Outside the team, though, Williams says it's not all fun. In a town where the average monthly wage is $400 and unemployment is high, people tend to assume that all Americans are fabulously wealthy. And this isolated, mountainous country could be called cold and white for more reasons than the long winters.''I'm the only black man in town, maybe in Bosnia. It's hard to keep a low profile,'' he says. Added to that are language difficulties. Most English speakers find the language that used to be called Serbo-Croatian to be a vowel-deficient Slavic nightmare. Williams understands his coach's instructions, and is fluent in cursing, but that's it. ''If you meet anyone who speaks English, you'll talk to them about anything -- 'How's the weather,' or, 'Look at this wall,''' he says. ''But it keeps you focused, it keeps you hungry.''
Like every other basketball player on earth, Williams wants to get into the NBA. His agent says that he's been ''absolutely thrilled'' about Williams' hard work to get into shape for the NBA while he's playing in Bosnia. ''I think the possibility is real -- he certainly remains on their radar,'' says Keith Kreiter, who heads the Skokie-based Edge Sports International. ''Sometimes a kid needs to get overseas and learn to polish their game, learn to play inside-outside -- they're a lot more valuable to a franchise.''
Whether he goes to the NBA or remains a European player, Williams says he's looking to provide for his family -- wife Minnetta, 26, a school teacher, and their 3-year-old twins, Lanyce and Lanetta. Keeping in touch with his growing family (there's a boy on the way) and his crew of friends, fellow players and former coaches back in Chicago, made for phone bills so alarming that Williams cut his phone off. He's not getting the daily razz from his friends anymore. ''They say, 'Where you at now -- Ethiopia? What you eatin'? They don't have no Harold's, they don't have no KFC,''' he says. But Williams, who says his ''humongous'' size several months ago prompted local journalists to ask whether his contract had a weight clause, hasn't had problems finding the Bosnian equivalent of KFC. On a recent January afternoon, he led an unsuspecting reporter to his favorite Turkish place in Sarajevo's old town, and put her to shame by devouring two large doner kebab sandwiches in one sitting.
Afterward, he walked through the bazaar to get a taxi, dodging the pigeons and pretending to ignore stares from the locals, who elbowed each other when they recognized him. The team still hasn't replaced the stolen station wagon. Williams cabs it home every afternoon to rest and watch NBA-TV between practices. But in a city where mentioning his name brings appreciative nods, he has discovered a few perks.''I get asked for tickets all the time -- taxi drivers beg for tickets almost,'' he says. ''And some of them, if I give them my autograph, they'll give me a ride for free.''

[Brando]

In a town where the average monthly wage is $400 and unemployment is high,

ovo mozda u nekom paralelnom svijetu

[Stitch__]

''It's on the Croatian border, and they think they're Croatians, and the fans spit on me, they throw things on my head -- they're like village people