Foreign Country | By Kans Malashanka

My name is Kanstantsin Malashanka or Kans – the American way to pronounce my name. One of the challenges I had to learn when I came to the USA for the first time – people too ignorant to learn your name if it doesn’t sounds the way they like.

Originally, I’m from Belarus, small Eastern European country, right between Russia and Poland.

I’m here to share my story how the basketball helped me to be where I am right now and all the challenges white European kid could have in America.

I’ve been in America for a while, about 8 years. I came in 2011. Prior to that I was trying to come to States for about 3 years. Basketball in U.S. is super developed,  basically, it’s the highest level in the world overall, best place you can go as a youngster to develop your game and get recognition. I can only dream about coming to US and play on a college level, cause for us with all the television highlights and marketing it seems like something unrealistic. Only best of the best could go and its happen very rare.

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But then, 1 of my friend got an offer from a random guy on Facebook like ‘hey, do you want to go?’. He was my teammate/roommate at the moment for the local basketball club we were playing for. My friend showed me the profile of the guy who offered him, he was some kinda an agent who was helping Eastern European guys come to the States to play. My friend wasn’t interesting but he encourage me to talk to him. I started messaging him, we started the process. He was charging 600 or 700 bucks but he wasn’t completely honest.  He was telling me to register somewhere, fill out some forms, all kinds of staff. Every day was something new. And of course everything was in English and I didn’t know it well enough at the moment, none of our guys did. So the guy could tell you anything and you would believe it. I think he was working in NBA for 2 years back in 1992 or something, so we trusted him.

I spent almost 3 years trying to get here, it was pretty hard. First of all you have to learn English. English is the most important part, then you have to be a good player, you have to show it to the coaches because they won’t take you just because you’re tall or you’re playing somewhere. They want to see film. The film should be good enough for them to believe you’re actually that good because it’s a big risk for them. Schools has scholarships and it’s thousands of dollars per year, and international scholarship costs even more than regular. So , in order to go, you have to make a video, and we were trying. That was, probably, the biggest struggle.

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My 1st attempt to come was 2008, right after highschool. Time was different, there were no phones with good HD cameras like right now. Nobody was filming our games, so we suppose to figure out the way to do it.  The regular video camera was pretty expensive and as 18 years old I can’t afford to buy it and none of my friends has it.

Then, for some reason, back home, most of the players want to come to the States or somewhere else with better situation, but coaches don’t want to let you go. If you try to go somewhere without them knowing and accepting it you will get in trouble. So, you have to ask somebody to film you from some kind of angle that nobody sees.

Then you have to do a lot of translations, transcripts, communicate with the school, with the coaches –  it’s a lot of things which could happen along the way.

I spent about 2.5-3 years just to come here. Finally, in 2010 I got an offer from a Prep school in North Carolina. It was good for me because the level at Prep school was lower than college. They don’t need any tests to prove you speak English enough, so you have time to adopt to the language, lifestyle and etc.  I got the offer, same as my friend. It wasn’t the full ride, but price was pretty low. We even paid some security deposits for them to secure the spot in school. The total cost was about 3000$ for a year. In Eastern Europe it’s different money wise even 500$ there is a big deal. You can not just pull out 500$. We didn’t work at the time so we have to ask our parents. We were going back and forth with this school, and then finally they helped us get a ‘tourist visa’, not even a ‘student visa’, so we can come and start train and play with a team. And then they supposed to change it.

So when we came to the States the school called and said we could not come anymore. Me and my friend were already in New York, the school was in North Carolina. We don’t know where to go, we don’t know what to do. We already in the States, we already burned all the bridges back home, we can not even go back to our teams. Fortunately for us, the agent was here in the States and was doing some camps. He told us he could stay with him for a bit then we would have to find an apartment. He promised that we could train with him and later he will show us to some coaches in order to get a scholarship for next year.

We were stuck in New York. We have to practice but then you have to work at the same time because our parents can not support us from back home, it’s just impossible, it was too expensive. Even just working and living in New York is really  expensive. We were trying different stuff and at the same time we were practicing every day. We played on some games on weekends, sometimes traveling to the different states. My first job was car wash for like 6$/HR or something like that in the “hood”. That was an interesting experience – when some people were seeing “white boys” are washing cars they just were going crazy. We were getting attitude and humiliating a lot. But again, lucky for us we weren’t understand a lot, so it helps.  Then, second hustle was flipping Apple products to people from Europe because back in 2011 it wasn’t world wide. And in some cities like Moscow to have something before everybody else was a big deal. People ready to pay crazy money to simply be first. So, we had to stay in line at 3-4 in the morning in order to buy those IPADs and then flip it to those Russian guys for like extra 100-150$. Not bad for 4 hours in line, right? So we would get up at 3, go to the store at 4, stay in line till 8, buy this IPADs, give it to the guy, and go back to practice.

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After 4 months, me and my friend finally got a scholarship. So we went back home to change our Visa. There was another struggle because in Belarus we still have mandatory Military Draft. When you turn 18 you have to go, unless you pursuing bachelor degree. This thing called the “White Ticket”, they allow you to skip the Army for 4 years if you pursue your Bachelor Degree but it’s only for 4 years and a one time pass. I already started going to school back home, so I already spent 2.5 years. And Military people already knew I quit the school so I cannot go home. If I would come straight home, they would probably take me out of the plane and send me straight to the military. So I had to go to Ukraine, get my Visa because in Ukraine nobody cares about us. Then I have to go to Russia from Ukraine because nobody checks the passports, then from Russia you have to go to Belarus because nobody checking your passport cause you BelaRussian. Same routing I had to do when I was going back.

Then I finally came to States, everything looked good, the school and the basketball season started. But, in New York is different world and  there’s a lot of diversity. Can you imagine how hard it is to move from 1 city to another when your 20 and you never left your home before, and here it’s a whole different country.  You’re all by yourself, you don’t know English enough, basketball is way different. Because it’s college and it’s scholarship, coaches wants you to perform 100%, plus you have to learn English, plus you have to go to classes and do well. So, that was very hard in the beginning. We still maintained very good grades, I don’t know how that happened but we were determined to succeed. Then interesting things started to happen because we were living in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn is a very interesting city.

Basketball wise, when we were trying to play in the park, sometimes people were refusing to play with us because we were from somewhere and we didn’t speak English or we speak with an accent. Right now my English is much better but it’s still not perfect, still a long way to go, but back then I was barely speaking.

Couple times, guys pull up knives or guns while we were playing cause someone would hit or foul on them too hard in the game. Back home we would watch American movies from Hollywood, and we saw this stuff and we were thinking it was just a movie but it’s very real.

Even though we were white, we witnessed racism problem in America in full effect.  We had a lot of problems when we were playing. Refs would give us attitude, a lot of the times they were against us. Needless to say, that we saw maybe 5-6 other white guys in different teams all season long and 3 of them were international too. Not of all our teammates were supporting us. Most players from opposite teams would foul or push us hard on purpose. The sportsmanship was pretty bad. 100% someone was talking trash all the time, the only good thing is that we weren’t able to understand for the most part.

One time in our practice, we almost fight with 1 of the guys. He was from the ‘hood.’ So we just walked away and after the practice he pulled out a knife and said he would kill one of us. And that was our own teammate. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do it to other guys (Americans) but because we were not from there, we got this kind of attitude.

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Later, college was pretty fun, I transferred to a school in Virginia next year. We didn’t have anything like that in Virginia, maybe it was a New York thing. Right now I’m in L.A., I don’t’ feel like that anymore. Maybe I’ve become older and have more confidence, my English is good enough to actually understand and answer to people.

So now I’m coaching, L.A. is probably the best place to be in terms of developing as a trainer, as a coach. I have so many opportunities to network and connect to various professionals in the industry.

I still have a lot of issues with where I’m from. I’m an outsider, I still feel like an outsider for everybody even though I’ve been living here for almost 8 years. Mentally, I changed a lot but I still remember where I came from and who I am.

This summer I was fortunate enough to work  with Drew Hanlen, one of the best basketball skills trainers in the world right now and NBA consultor. I was around a lot of NBA people, players, coaches, high level talent and prospects. Twice this past 2 years I was coming to summer league to network to talk to people, to connect. It’s a really big difference on a high level and a lower level, I can tell.

Right now I’m coaching in Junior College, I’m an assistant coach and I can tell a big difference – high level people know that people from overseas, especially from Eastern Europe,  know basketball. We have really good basketball fundamentals “school”, professional approach, we know stuff. It’s a lot of great coaches, players, great professional scouts came from Europe. But in lower level you have to prove it, people hear the accent, they see you’re from somewhere else and that’s it, they don’t respect you right away. There’s no respect at all, you have to prove it. Even for my players.

Sometimes I play with them in a pickup games, players who know me for some time know what I can do and how I play even though I retired over 6 years ago. Sometimes it’s a bad day and I  didn’t show my best game, so if there is new players in gym usually they don’t listen. I was lucky enough to spend couple years in a PRO team . It’s nothing close to Euroleague or NBA but it’s still pro. And of course those couple years gave me a lot of experience. Plus, now as a coach I’m studying the game a lot. This is different approach now. Books, videos, clinics, other coaches – tone of knowledge.  But most guys just don’t see it, they don’t understand, and some of them don’t want to know.

The same thing happened this year with those Ball brothers who went to Lithuania to play over there in the pro league.  When I was reading comments in social media it was getting out of hand. People see the highlights, see the gyms which are not that big and fancy as in NBA or big D1 schools and they think they are playing in some kinda amateur league. Those comments are real, they would say: “Oh, my pickup games in YMCA is much better.” But they just simply don’t understand – Lithuania is next to Belarus and it’s the basketball mecca of Europe. They are one of the best. Just the way they play is different. I think there’s 2 million people in the country but they are top 4 or top 6 in the world. Can you imagine 2 million people? That’s less than the people in Los Angeles. They still playing at that level. In Lithuania basketball is like a second religion.

So, what I’m trying to say, that American kids a lot of times they have no idea what is going on outside and I think that’s why they don’t respect it that much. And I am trying to change it and explain as much as I can. Unfortunately, lots of coaches and trainers teaching the game the wrong way or don’t have enough knowledge and experience to be able to teach. In most European countries, as far as I know, you have to actually study in college to be a coach. But here anybody could be a coach, a lot of time some of them don’t even know how the human body works. My goal is create a platform to teach people the right way to play basketball, train and recover, combining experience from Europe and US.  I want to be able to teach as many people as possible.

Kans Malashanka, Basketball Coach.

 

Any individuals in sports and fitness who would like to share their voice, please submit to hank@hankfittraining.com