Globetrotters

By John Gearan ’65

Awestruck, Torey Thomas ’07 espies this giant phantom of a man running up court, right at him. Who is this Viking vision wearing the golden uniform of the Sundvald Dragons? Is it really Scottie Pippen, an American sports icon?

“I had to pinch myself … this can’t be real,” the rugged little guard tells himself.

Yet it is.

On this frigid Friday night of Jan. 11, Thomas, a rookie American import, is performing professionally for Akropol BBK in the Swedish Basketball League. Pippen, once a superstar with the dynastic NBA Champion Chicago Bulls, is making a one-game paid appearance in Stockholm during a brief Scandinavian tour.

Thomas showcases his talents, hustling all over the court. He leaps to steal a lob pass intended for Pippen. He scores 22 points, dishes out 15 assists, collects seven rebounds and seven assists. Thomas is voted the game’s co-MVP along with the immortal Pippen, who scores 21.

Ten months earlier, Thomas and his feisty Crusaders had been ousted by Southern Illinois from the NCAA tournament. Since then, Thomas had auditions with the Knicks, Nets, Jazz and Celtics, but was not selected in the NBA draft.

To keep his dream alive, Thomas traipses off to foreign climes to work on his game. After only two days in Kormend, Hungary, he bolts for a better deal with Kepez Belediye, joining his Crusader co-Captain and roomie, Keith Simmons ’07, in Antalya, Turkey. Unhappy with import rules that limit his playing time, Thomas jumps to Akropol BBK where he becomes a minor celebrity.

On Feb. 6, Thomas pours in 37 points, hands out 11 assists and pulls down 15 rebounds—a triple double that he hopes some NBA scout will notice.

*
It is difficult to know exactly how many Crusader alums have splashed about in the international bouillabaisse of basketball.

A half dozen grads played professional ball abroad just this past year. There have been perhaps another 40 who have played-for-pay in foreign climes during the last 40 years.

A handful thought that international competition would be a steppingstone to the National Basketball Association. For most, they went on a lark and for a chance to experience different cultures. And they returned wiser, some a bit richer, but all with a backpack stuffed full of entertaining tales of derring-do, culture shock, homesickness, faux celebrity and strange games.

*
Bobby Kissane and Joe Phelan were teammates, classmates and close friends. They still are. As they strolled toward graduation in 1971, American campuses were being churned by cultural upheaval and a national discord over the Vietnam War.

Phelan, a swingman and sixth man, had concerns about what lottery number he might draw in the military draft. Kissane, a Hall of Fame scoring machine, seemed more worried about the NBA draft.

Peaceniks at heart, both had a penchant for a little personal hell-raising and a consuming desire to play basketball ad infinitum. They remember fondly playing in Holy Cross’ record (largest margin of victory—70 points) thrashing of St. Michael’s, 138-68, at the Worcester Auditorium on Dec. 3, 1970. That night Phelan’s draft lottery number was selected.

“It was low,” he recalls, “in the 30s.”

Kissane is drafted—by the NBA Suns and ABA Nets. After an unsuccessful tryout in Phoenix, Bobby K heads for Paris, hooking up with the Racing Club of France.

Phelan takes off for Germany to play basketball.

“I figured the Army would not bother to extradite me,” he says with a laugh. Fortunately, Phelan never is called to arms. He joins the basketball branch of the SGN Ski Club in Essen, Germany. “I didn’t even know how to ski,” he says.

“We were basketball vagabonds. Like wandering Australian tennis pros,” says Phelan. “They really didn’t have to pay us. We were loving what we were doing and living large. Here we were making decent money, getting free food and the use of a car. I would meet up with Bob in Paris and we’d go for beers.”

Phelan would go to Munich to watch the 1972 Olympics, being promoted as “The Happy Games.” He is there when the Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September kills 11 Israeli hostages. He would bear witness to the shock and horror. He would also see all the USA basketball games, including the controversial one-point loss to the Soviet Union—an infamous game stolen from the Americans who refused to accept their silver medals.

Kissane is a natural raconteur. Upon his arrival in France, team managers inquire about his ethnicity. Perplexed by the question, Kissane tells them that he is “an American Indian.” His quip backfires, he says, when the team promotes him as an American Indian: “They were insisting I wear a headdress, but I refused—I had long hair, so I did agree to wear a headband and do a few war-whoops for the crowd.” Kissane gains Parisian celebrity as a 6-foot-8-inch Indian who could really shoot from the outside.
Payday, Kissane says, would be an adventure. He would enter a café owned by the team’s owners in the red-light Pigalle section of Paris.

“I would go into some sleazy backroom, and they would stuff my pockets with cash,” he says.

Kissane spins yarns about his time with the Racing Mechelen Club in Belgium. The team arrives in Barcelona for European Cup play. The headlines catch Kissane’s attention. The day before, soccer fans killed a referee after a match.

“Back then,” he recalls, “the basketball refs usually made sure the visiting teams did not win. But that night we were beating the hell out of the Spanish team. With two minutes left, the crowd begins ringing the court, five deep. The next thing we know, the Spanish Marines are storming the court with rifles at the ready. They escort us to our bus, which the mob starts rocking. A very scary moment.”

By the end of 1973, Kissane and Phelan are back in Worcester where they play park-league, semipro and pick-up basketball together for several years. Kissane develops into a superb designer and handcrafter of fine furniture and operates his own shop today. Phelan earns a Ph.D. in adolescent emotional disturbance at the University of Connecticut. For many years, Phelan has spearheaded the Alternative Education program at Auburn (Mass.) High.

*
Chris Rojik ’97 sits in his airport hotel room, very much depressed. He had washed out in Germany again, without ever getting a chance to prove he could play pro ball.

After graduation, he signed up for a summer tour for American hoopsters hoping to land a contract with a German pro team. The tour is badly run. The guys are not very serious about their mission. The 6-foot-7-inch Rojik cannot land a job. He comes home, finding work at an investment company.

The next summer, he goes back for another shot. This time, he signs a contract for a $30,000 net salary along with free room, board and a team car. A week before the season’s opener, Rojik gets cut. His inexperienced agent screwed up. The lawsuit he files is going nowhere.

So he is heading home.

The phone rings in his hotel room the night before his scheduled 7 a.m. flight.

“It was my agent,” recalls Rojik. “He had arranged a tryout for me with the Rounder Dragons.”
Rojik had his paid-for airplane ticket in hand.

“But I was there, so I figured I should at least go to the tryout,’’ he explains.

The plane takes off without him.

Rojik makes the Dragons, a second division team, and plays well. In his third season, Rojik signs a better deal with a club in Iserlohn. That’s where he meets his wife, Sonia Badas de Oliveira—a shooting guard for the Iserlohn women’s team.

After three seasons there, he returns to the Dragons where he has been a mainstay for the past five seasons. He averaged 17 points and seven rebounds this season. The Rojiks have a daughter, Emilia, age 3. For six-to-eight weeks every summer, they come back to Wareham, Mass., where Chris’ dad still coaches the high school girls.

“It has been the best time of my life,” says Rojik. He has already signed for next season. At 33, Rojik is living happily in the town of Bad Honnef, not far from Bonn. He plans to coach there after his playing days are done. “Great town, good schools for Emilia. We will probably be here for a long time.’’

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Globetrotters, continued >>