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Bryson hopes Spanish bus ride ends in NBA
You take a vacation, pick a city on the spur of the moment. You walk
around, aimless tourists. You find an outdoor square, and there is a
sports arena at the end of the block.
People are selling homemade potato chips and popcorn, purple-and-
white scarves, and hats and pennants with the words "Real Madrid."
You notice a few people lining up at a ticket window and a big bus
backing up around a corner, almost stuck, with a bunch of basketball
players giggling and pointing out the window.
You stop.
Then the players get off the bus, and the last one off, a tall young
man with his head down, is James Bryson, a center not yet two years
out of Villanova, a familiar face in this foreign town. Bryson looks
up, and what a story follows.
James Bryson is 23, married to Sydney, a graduate of Hampton
University in Virginia. He lives this life of bus rides, basketball,
strange food and different language in a town that doesn't even have
a McDonald's, but does have a Pizza Hut under construction, thank
goodness.
On this particular night, Bryson will be head-butted into
unconsciousness by a hulking superstar, clear his head, see a near-
riot, then have his team win a most improbable game. Already this
year, Bryson has had three stitches under an eye, eight stitches on
his chin, and now a TKO from Arvidis Sabonis.
You gotta want to play the game to do this.
Bryson's team is from Orense, a pretty, small town deep in the
northeastern part of Spain that curls over the top of Portugal and
to the Atlantic Ocean and is as far away as you can be in Spain from
the cosmopolitan, Madrid and Barcelona and the Mediterranean coast.
Sydney Bryson spends her time taking Spanish lessons, aerobics
classes and Bible study, and trying to make the two-bedroom
apartment like America.
Which means she gets CDs from home and scavenges the grocery for
food she can cook like at home -- chicken and spaghetti mostly --
and waits for friends and family in Philadelphia to send tapes of TV
shows. "Martin" and "Married . . . With Children" are particularly
welcome.
Bryson hasn't exactly chosen to play basketball in Europe. The NBA
would be better, of course. Bryson had gone to NBA camps, and nobody
had signed him. Yet. That's what Bryson said: yet.
- Apartment, car are free
He is 6-foot-11 though, a big man, and a valued commodity in the
European leagues of Greece, Italy, France and Spain. At Villanova,
he had been an inconsistent player, brilliant sometimes --
especially offensively -- but then invisible other times. Which is
hard to do when you are 6-11.
Bryson's agent, Glen, Schwartzman got Bryson a contract with Orense.
The Spanish league is considered the best in Europe, easily.
The money is better, too. Bryson wouldn't say how much he's making
exactly, but certainly he is making a six-figure salary. Plus, the
apartment is free, and so is the car. "We only pay for our food and
our phone calls," Bryson said.
A lot of Americans won't put up with what goes on. Bryson's team
took a six-hour bus ride to this game, and that's not something
Bryson ever experienced in high school or college.
There is some prejudice against the American players, too. They get
the bigger salaries and the free apartments. Each Spanish-league
team is allowed to have three foreign players on its roster. In
addition to Bryson, Orense has Chandler Thompson, once a star at
Ball State, and Darrel Armstrong, a guard who played at Fayetteville
State in North Carolina.
Veteran Howard Wood, who played at Tennessee in the early 1980s, is
on the team, too. He married a Spanish woman and is not considered a
foreign player now.
Which brings us to this unimposing gym in Madrid, a block away from
a deparment store and tucked in between some ugly, brick apartment
buildings. There is graffiti all over the outside walls of the arena,
and many chain-smokers waiting to buy tickets.
- Sabonis `like Michael Jordan'
This isn't supposed to be a big game. Orense has never beaten Real
Madrid and has a 4-12 record this season. Real Madrid has been the
European champion and is often the Spanish champion. And besides,
Real Madrid has Sabonis.
"He's sort of like Michael Jordan over here," Bryson said. "He's
probably the most famous player in Europe now. I'd never played
against him. Man, he's good."
Indeed Sabonis, 30 years old and nearly stationary with bad knees,
is still an awesome player. About 7-foot-3, he seems to be built of
concrete.
Sabonis gathers in nearly every rebound, makes dazzling passes, has
hands faster than a magician's, and pretty much dominates Bryson,
especially in the first half.
In fact, Bryson's coach, Randy Knowles -- an American who played at
Texas A&M and in Spain -- pulls Bryson with about nine minutes left
in the half and lets his young center sit and stew. "I wasn't
aggressive enough," Bryson will say later. "I was sluggish."
Bryson wasn't sluggish in the second half. He took the ball right at
Sabonis and four times drove around the big building that is Sabonis.
This was sort of like poking a stick in the snout of a bear. It was
a bad idea, it turned out.
Sabonis was on the bench awhile, resting, and Orense peeled away at
a lead that had been consistently 12 to 15 points until Orense was
tied. Sabonis came back, Madrid went back up by seven, but then
Orense pulled back to within three.
There were 34 seconds left when Thompson missed a layup and Sabonis
one-handed the rebound.
Bryson did what was natural. Swatted at Sabonis to get a quick foul
and stop the clock. The whistle blew, the foul was called. Bryson
stood facing Sabonis.
And then Sabonis did the strangest thing.
In less than a second, an eyeblink, Sabonis cracked his head against
Bryson's forehead. Bryson crumpled to the ground. Thompson, Bryson's
teammate, said, "You were twitching, man."
For 15 seconds, Bryson lay unconscious on the floor, and all hell
broke loose. The fans rushed to the railings. Everybody on the two
teams squared off.
Sabonis wasn't fazed. He raised his fists and looked around, but
nobody was going to challenge him.
No doctor or trainer came out to Bryson. He finally got up and tried
to go after Sabonis, except he couldn't. Bryson staggered like a
drunk, as if he were seeing two or three or four Sabonises. Bryson
didn't get near the hulking Russian and, after maybe three or four
minutes, order was restored.
Sabonis was ejected. Except for the five players from each team on
the floor, all the other players were shooed off the benches.
- Teeth numb, but hero happy
After all the technicals and free throws and after a crucial blocked
shot from Bryson, Orense had a one-point lead and the ball with a
tenth of a second left. All those Orense players who had been exiled
thought the game was over, and they rushed the court.
Bad idea.
Game wasn't over, and a technical was called. Orense got two free
throws for the foul on the rebound and made one. Madrid got two
technical foul shots and could have won the game. Real Madrid made
one.
Orense 79, Real Madrid 78.
Bryson was mobbed. And he was a hero back in Orense, too, after the
middle-of-the-night bus ride home.
Police held Orense in the locker room for a good hour after the game,
for safety's sake. Bryson couldn't feel some of his teeth -- they
were numb -- but he was ecstatic. He was the star.
Sydney Bryson and Chandler Thompson's wife and children and in-laws
had made the trip to Madrid. The film clip of the head butt was all
over CNN International and in all the Spanish papers.
The second half he had played against Sabonis was a confidence-
builder, Bryson said. That's what Europe has done for Bryson: made
him more confident.
There is still that dream of the NBA, of course. Bryson will come
home in April and go to NBA camps again. You can make a career and
good money, especially in the Spanish league. You just have to be a
special person. And be able to take the head butt.
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