By Michalis Giulenoglou / info@eurohoops.net
During the summer, Lorenzo Brown decided to join defending EuroLeague champions Panathinaikos and strengthen their championship-caliber backcourt, playing alongside Kendrick Nunn, Kostas Sloukas, and Jerian Grant.
He departed Maccabi Tel Aviv after two years, and a tense situation during the last season in Israel.
“Last year was a very difficult situation, just due to the fact that everything was out of our control. We didn’t really know much about the history of the situation, and I still don’t know much about it, but I was riding with my teammates, so whatever they were going through, I was going through too,” Lorenzo Brown told Eurohoops.
He remembered the night everything started — a night he’ll hardly ever forget.
“What I remember most is the day everything happened. It was early in the morning, and we woke up to the sounds of sirens and bombs, so it was very scary. At that moment, my wife was pregnant with our son, and we were trying to figure out our next move. We didn’t really know how we were going to leave because the airports were closed down. A lot of my teammates came to my apartment, and we tried to figure something out. The team ended up getting us a flight to Cyprus, probably the next day, and we were safe, but it was still a very scary situation. Travel was difficult, like I said, because my wife was pregnant, and I had to be there for her while we were making those moves. It was a lot to juggle, but we got through it.”
Brown admits that, in a way, everything he experienced during last year influenced his decision to move on.
“In a sense, yeah, it came down to me and my teammates making that decision. A lot of us were just trying to figure out the best moves for ourselves and our families, so we came together as a unit and decided that this was what we were going to do,” Lorenzo Brown concluded.