Pro ball in Dnipro

Pre-game warm-ups
As I walked into the gym, it was immediately clear that this wouldn’t be anything like the spectacle of an American NBA game. No jumbotron, no foam-fingers, no, not even a usher to check our tickets and point the way to our seats. At court level, only feet away from the players of Kryvyi Rih warming-up, we found our seats ourselves. So maybe it wasn’t the NBA, and maybe it didn’t scream professional basketball, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t basketball. The familiar screech of sneakers against the hardwood, and the swoosh of jump shots splashing through the net, tingled my basketball nerves, and nostalgic memories of my basketball puberty flooded me--the games I attended as a student of Roosevelt High School. Indeed, the space was hardly bigger than my high school gym, and even the same cliché hip-hop that played at those games in 2001 could be heard blaring from speakers here.
Ten minutes before the game I contentedly watch Dnipropetrovsk’s players do the same kinds of lay-up lines and stretches that I assume are universal to basketball everywhere. If there’s a certain demographic of the Ukrainians that enjoy watching basketball a look at the fans around me didn’t yield much data; it was a seemingly balanced mix of men and women, young and old, families and not.
The only novelty is the fan section directly opposite from where we're sitting. Packed in the corner section, about 50 young men (and some women) are standing, clapping and decked in the blue and baby blue of their home squad. They're holding up Dnipro BC banners and home-made signs, and taking turns leading each other in sing-song, and call-and-response chants. It's the basketball approximation of the much larger fan-zones at football (soccer) games. Try as they might, however, at no part of the game are they able to muster the same kind of raucousness as at the football stadium. (And I have to give a homer shout-out here to my university's fan section, the Dawg Pack, and say that this crew has nothing on us.)

The American Line-up
Whereas a typcial NBA game features guess singers of the national anthem and video highlight clips of the players as they were announced, the game procedure here in Dnipro again consisted of little fanfare. There was a momentary flag observance as the Ukrainian anthem played over the loudspeakers, and traditional hand-slap lines for both teams as their players were announced.
In its starting line-up Dnipro has three players with noticeably darker than their teammates. Also there names come off the tongue off the PA announcer with more than a little awkwardness. Patrick Beverly, Darnell Lazare, and Devin Green have come all the way from America to continue their basketball dreams in Ukraine. But the story of their presence here is nothing special. As the NBA continues to take only the highest echelons of world basketball talent, those players whose play in college and other professional leagues isn’t deemed worthy by one of 32 NBA teams, but still want to make a living from basketball, often find there home in lesser but still quality leagues such as the Ukraine Basketball League.
Perhaps more interesting is the import of an American as the coach of Dnipropetrovsk Basketball League. With roughly five minutes left before game-time, Bob Donewald paces hyper-energetically onto the court. His gray slacks and suit jacket sit much to big on his portly frame, and he abstains a shirt and tie for a single black turtleneck, obviously doing his best impersonation of Miami Heat coach Stan Van Gundy. But more on coach later…

The game
Tip-off sees Kryvyi Rah score a quick and easy basket in a post. I spend most of the first quarter estimating the quality of play against my American reference. Though perhaps the pace is substantially slower than the brand played by most American teams, the teams execute a crisp pick and roll based offense and do a good job playing above the rim. Overall it’s comparable to high-level university games in the States. Matched against to my beloved University of Washington Huskies I figure that Kyrvyi Rih would win split 5 out of any 10 games. Dnipropetrovsk would maybe win 3 out of 10.
At least today Dnipropetrovsk looks clearly overmatched by its opponent. Allowing easy basket after easy basket in post position Dnipro falls behind big in the first period. After Patrick Beverly gets burned on a backdoor play by fellow American, Jarett Howell, coach Donewald pulls him out. Donewald greets Beverly’s arrival to the bench with a furious f-word filled rant. Where the fuck is your head, Donewald screams, plan for all the fans on my side of the gym to hear. The Ukrainian around me chuckle, the f-bomb definitely an international word. Unleashing his frustrations on his players, the referees, and even the opposing coach, in curse-filled tirades is one of Donewald's persistent coaching methods, but at least for this spectator it seems like maybe he should spend more energy coaching. Time and time again, it looks as though Dnipro’s team defensive scheme is completely at a lost to stop K.R. from getting post buckets. As the first half closes, only the outstanding offensive play of Green really miraculously pulls Dnipro within 5.
Half-time
American basketball hasn’t only brought its players to the world, it’s also brought a key part of its spectacle: the dance team. At halftime we are treated to ten minutes of the Dnipro dance team. Whereas the quality of basketball at the game is reasonably high in comparison to the American level, the quality of its dance entertainment is certainly not. Inexplicably dressed in black and green outfits resembling the wardrobe of Xena the Warrior princess, the Dnipro dance team performs to a music variety that while all high-energy, has no perceptible cohesion, and more importantly, no connection to the dance moves performed. To hip-hop, the dancers execute some type of French cha-cha kicks. To hyped-up Elvis, they do the most inconceivable and surprisingly un-erotic move imaginable: a mid-air bumping of butts. Finally, and although it pains me to say it, when the dance team takes streamers of blue and yellow to pay homage to Ukraine, the ensuing fluttering and intertwining of the ribbons was a level of choreography comparable to my little sister’s high school dance troupe. But anyway, they were pretty girls.


The second half and exit

Green's attempt to pull Dnipro's act together can't make up for the complete vacuum of interior defense that continues to suck stronger. On the other end, KR's bigs easily push Dnipro's game outside making for an inefficient and ineffective premiter game. Dnipro's Beverly tries to push the pace, but his troops aren't with him. Conversely, his American counterpart on the KR side, Howell, methodically runs pick and roll with the Slavic frontcourt. In this way, KR steadily builds its lead in the second half of about 9-10 points, and is content to let hold Dnipro at this length. Donewald continues to tirade, but clearly grows more resigned to his fate by the end. So it seems do the Dnipro players

A far more interesting scene than the actual basketball occurs after the game. Throughout the game, the Dnipro fans have found a lot of the officiating to complain about. For instance, it doesn't take a lot of Russian, to understand when the group of teenagers saw a charge not a block--there's a (basketball) universal code for this. From my part, save from a phantom blocking call on Dnipro in the open court, there's nothing memorable about the way the game's been called. Conventional wisdom says that equals good officiating.
Apparently, the Dnipro fan-zone, thought they saw something quite different. Or maybe that just wanted to add a little fun to a kind of snoozer game. As soon as the buzzer sounds Dnipro's predictable defeat, the dedicated Dnipro fans rush the court and systematically forming a human circle around one of the official. More comical than menacing, the ref looks more annoyed than intimidated, as he futilely tries to break the fans red rover arm-locks. The arena officials and few police officers simply look on amused, and only half-heartedly make an effort to get the fans off the court.
Its maybe the most visceral reminder of the gap between professional here and professional in the NBA. Whereas it's still possible that the court could be violated by the presence of the fanns in the NCAA, in the rapturous event of a considerable homecourt victory, in the NBA the liminal space of the court could never be violated in this way. The court and kind of sacred gladitorial pitch for humans existing at a level quite above us.
Here, I watch as the fans hardly care about the Dnipro players still around, sipping Gatorade. They'd rather play games that involve themselves as entertainment. There's been no pantheon built here like at the new Dnipro football stadium just outside. This is Dnipro basketball and it's amateur, human terrain.

A (different) quiet before...

In response to Alex Gödde’s “A quiet before…” as posted at
http://openit.com.ua/reportage.php?id=110#1


5:30 am (ok, maybe 6:30am)

It is surprising how quiet the streets are in the pre- and early-dawn hours--I’ll give him that. But birdsongs? Thoroughfares and string quartets?--As for the rest of my colleague’s poetic vignette, I’m not so sure we’re living the same city. I’ve walked this same path many times and let’s just say it doesn’t inspire in me the same kinds of Wordsworthian preambles.
So how about another look? Something less like the English Romantic poets, and something more like Ginsberg, admittedly an exaggeration, but only inversely proportional to the way Alex exaggerated his, and maybe something closer to the true picture.

Maybe it’s all the snow that seeps into microscopic cracks then freezes and expands thus splintering the cement. Maybe it’s the drill-like heels of so many Ukrainian women driving down as they walking purposefully to their destinations. And maybe the city just can’t afford regular maintenance. Whatever it is, the sidewalk of Komsomolskaya street is cratered everywhere like the surface of some moon. Its pits collect dirt, leaves, water and snow in treacherous hollows. I keep a conscious eye downward as I exit my apartment and step onto Komsomolskaya. I want to keep my boots clean today. A group of stray dogs, small but by no means emaciated, pass by completely indifferent to me.

I take the first left into Globa park. The entrance here is elevated and I can see the expanse of the park. The winter skeletons of the park’s trees etch into the gray sky and give suggestions of the yellow-green spring. Unfortunately their beauty is marred by what lies sitting in the western part of the park. I can see a steel pirate ship, a strongman’s hammer and bell stand, a yellow-roofed games hall, all parts of the park’s carnival area of soviet-era entertainments. It could be that because I was raised in Seattle, a city that understands how seamlessly it’s natural spaces should be integrated with construction, but the machines here seem to me to cut a jarring and hideous contrast to park’s true nature. Save for the weekend and holiday times, when crowds of parents and grandparents bring their kids, the entertainments sit frozen and abandoned, and painted in a garrulous mix of kid-favored primary colors they never fail to make me think of the cliché opening montage of a bad Stephan King novel adapted to television.

Turning my back to the carnival area, I walk along the side of the park’s swan pond. I walk under the pedestrian bridge and remember that this is the place that, for some reason I can’t ascertain, a drainage pipe drips a small, but not negligible amount of noxious pond scum. At the edge of the pond area an old woman heavily bundled slowly and mechanically sweeps the yesterday’s trash. There’s a lot of it, beer cans and the screw tops of vodka bottles and the ketchup stained paper of hot dog wraps. Drinking on park benches is a favorite past time of Ukrainians young and old (as it is for many peoples), and the aftermath is always too-small concrete garbage receptacles overflowed. So with the garbage vessels filled, and perhaps because of a lack of civic pride and/or loss of inhibition, all trash finds it home on the earth.

As I pass the old woman momentarily stops sweeping. She’s swinging the kind of broom, that could only make a Westerner think of the Wicked Witch of the West--it’s all bramble and twig spun together. I think I could say good morning to her, but for some reason I don’t think she liked the interruption. I could be wrong, but she kept starring at the broom, waiting to resume.

A security guard walks by. After his night shift? On the way to his day shift? Anyway, he carries a plastic beer bottle, screw-top, halfway drunk. From what I’ve seen, it’s not a true stereotype that there are more heavy drinkers than normal in the ranks of the Slavic population. But for the ones that are, they don’t hide their alcoholism behind doors, and I’m willing to venture that therein lies part of that stereotype’s creation.

Finally out of Globa I turn onto Karla Marxa. The T.G.I Friday’s on Serova is not yet streaming the Red Hot Chili Peppers from its speakers. Between Privat Bank and some other bank there’s a statue a monument in alcove of someone. Maybe he’s a Soviet hero, maybe he’s a Ukrainian poet. Whoever he is, I’ve never heard of him.