When he left Lebanon July 30 to head to Spain for a basketball tryout camp, Anthony Trautman had no guarantees.
The Lebanon High and Lebanon Valley College graduate was told scouts from European teams would see him play and maybe he would receive an offer from one of them. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
Only one way to find out, and that was to hop on a plane and travel to Girona, a city about an hour north of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast. He and a couple dozen other hopefuls lived and practiced together, and Trautman spent some time in Barcelona where he got to talk with Charles Barkley on the beach and saw several members of the U.S. national team (James Harden and Kyrie Irving) riding around on Segways.
In early September, an offer came. A club team in Zwickau, Germany, a city of about 95,000 near the Czech border, was interested in having him play. He flew into Leipzig, about an hour away, and then drove to Zwickau where he met his new team. He has his own apartment, and a grocery store is about a block away. He made a visit to Dresden, about an hour away. So life is good.
“I’m not bored,” he wrote in a text Thursday. “I get along with my teammates and coach. They all speak English. We are 2-0 and I am averaging 28 points in my first 2 games and we won by 30 something the first game and 27 the second.”
The team plays games on weekends, with a schedule that extends into March. During the week, he helps coach high school and younger players.
There will be a break over the holidays and he plans to return to Lebanon in mid-December for about three weeks.
Here’s a link to results from the league in which his team, GGZ Baskets Zwickau, competes: http://www.basketball-bund.net/index.jsp?Action=103&liga_id=13750&defaultview=1.
OTHER HOOPS NOTES: Lebanon Valley College’s men’s team begins practice Sunday and will have two scrimmages, including a home contest Nov. 8 against Gettysburg. The Flying Dutchmen, who are going to be much improved, open the season against defending Centennial Conference champion Johns Hopkins in York College’s tip-off tournament Nov. 15. …
The NBA season opens in two weeks. While much of the attention is focused on Cleveland, keep an eye on the Bulls and, yes, the Heat, to challenge in the East. Defending champ San Antonio will be pushed hard in the West by the Thunder (assuming Kevin Durant can return healthy in about two months), Warriors (with new coach Steve Kerr), Clippers and Rockets. Who knows what the Sixers are doing. That operation seems to have no interest in competing this season, again. Shouldn’t the idea be to win games, and not to collect draft picks? …
High school basketball begins Dec. 5. We will have another good season in Lebanon County. More on that later, but one parting note: Cedar Crest and Lebanon won’t play this season until Jan. 16. …
World Series: March prediction was San Francisco over Oakland. Kansas City looks awesome now, but so did Colorado heading into the 2007 Series vs. Boston. Red Sox fans are still celebrating.
Follow along on Twitter @sesnyderleb.