By Antonis Stroggylakis / AStroggylakis@eurohoops.net
Picture a 22-year-old U.S. player. He’s fresh out of school and goes undrafted despite a productive run with his college team. He looks at his options and decides that what he should do right now is head overseas, to Europe so that he begins playing professional basketball.
It’s literally a trip into the complete unknown for this young baller. A dive into some uncharted and potentially not-so-friendly waters that he must successfully navigate himself through during the first steps of his career if he wants to make it as a pro.
Before he established himself as an elite guard in Europe and began winning all sorts of titles and collecting big MVP awards in every single major continental championship, Tyrese Rice was exactly in that position. And this is what his own experience taught him.
“The first thing that I’m telling younger guys now about going to Europe is to learn about the culture,” Rice told Eurohoops in a live video interview. “Learn about where you are first. If you learn about the person and the people it’s easier for you to do the things that you want to do. When go to these countries, you have to learn about the people. I was in Greece first and I didn’t understand anything. Now, I look back at it and I realize that I learned about the Greek culture and know about the Greek guys and understand how they think about things, it makes it easier for me to play basketball.”
“Basketball is easy. But, if you are struggling off the court, you’re going to struggle on the court,” Rice added. “And it goes hand to hand. Some things that we don’t take as seriously as we should because we don’t think that their ‘comfort level’ really matters like that. But if you are comfortable off the court, it makes it much easier to play basketball on the court, when you understand what’s going on.”
Rice’s own journey began in Greece in 2009 with Panionos and likely also finished in Greece, as he hinted back in October after the Basketball Champions League Final 8 with AEK Athens. In between, he achieved something that no other player has managed to do: Being named the EuroLeague Final Four MVP as a Maccabi Tel Aviv player plus the EuroCup season and Finals MVP with Khimki Moscow while winning those titles in a sequence in 2014 through 2015.
Years afterward and when he made his BCL debut with Brose Bamberg, he added yet another season MVP silverware to his trophy case.
In the anniversary of the 2014 EuroLeague Final, Rice (wearing a Sergio Llull jersey) talked to Eurohoops about life without basketball, looked back at some of the most memorable moments of his career and explained why he wouldn’t change anything in his run as player. He also picked the coaches he’d want to play for and gave his 2021 Final Four predictions.
Here’s some of the things Rice said on: