What's My Story?

I'm a Turk-American who plays basketball and loves professional basketball. I've grown up in America and know the NBA the best, but international basketball fascinates me. I had always followed the US "Dream Teams" and enjoyed the show they put on, but in 2004, when Argentina beat the US, it hit home how good the rest of the world had really become. I have been following the development of the USA Basketball program under the leadership of Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski with rapt attention ever since.

Regardless of the US's success in regaining its previous globe-spanning prominence, I think that basketball fans everywhere are now entering a golden age of mind-numbingly high quality competition. For not only is the US team improving, so is seemingly every other nation - especially young tigers like Spain, Russia, and China.

In 2007, I lived in Istanbul, Turkey and was a Turkish-English translator for the Turkish Basketball Federation's website. I watched many Euroleague games in the Turkish National Team's home arena - the Abdi Ipekçi arena - and saw first hand how good European basketball is. Here are the articles I wrote during my informative time abroad:

1. My experience going to the first NBA game ever played in Turkey I wrote for interbasket.net.
2. A 2007-08 Euroleague preview I wrote about Turkey's most historic basketball club team - Efes Pilsen - for my friend Julien DeBove.
3. Observations I made about my first Euroleague game in the Abdi Ipekçi arena for Julien's website - ballineurope.com.