A guy from the team was supposed to meet me at the airport in Munich. It was the first week of August, 1996. Grown-up life was about to begin: my first real job. I had no address to go to and no phone numbers to call. The club had promised to give me an apartment to live in but, as I wandered through the terminal, looking for my ride, I really had no idea where I’d be sleeping that night.
Luckily, Grescho was easy to spot. We were about the same height, 6ft 6in. “Basketball?” he said. I nodded and followed him out to the parking lot. The car was the coach’s; Grescho was doing him a favour. The rest of the team was having lunch at some restaurant in town. As he drove the stick-shift jerkily through the Bavarian countryside, Grescho spoke a little TV-show English with a thick accent.
At some point, I switched into German, maybe to show off (my mother is German). After that, the conversation flowed easier, but it was my first mistake. American basketball players in Europe belonged to a kind of aristocracy, the elite. Clubs had quotas on the numbers of foreigners they could hire. My German passport had been my ticket to a job, but fluency also meant I was just one of the guys. That’s the thing with athletes: they take advantage. Everything is a competition, even conversation, and you don’t win by listening well and asking people questions.