When retired European basketball veteran Brent Petway contacted Eurohoops early in the summer, we had no idea what the end result would be. The former player and fan favorite decided to give an account of his career with no hold bars, taking us on a trip to his highs and lows, while providing a unique player’s perspective to professional basketball in Europe.
Petway’s writings tackle issues that range from locker room dynamics to depression and almost everything in between.
Τhis is not only a satisfying read by all accounts but also a warning and a cautionary tale for young players. Especially if you are an aspiring basketball player do yourself a favor and read it.
Enjoy…
Ι’m gonna start by writing I have felt for a long time that this athletics game is one of the dirtiest, slimiest professions in the world. Maybe only second to being a politician. I have seen some unbelievable things happen not just to me but also to teammates, close friends that would drive most people to be insane, to a state of depression or very low mental health which is what I have been dealing with for years. I will only speak about my personal experiences and what I saw with my own eyes, not stories I heard even if I know them to be true.
This game of being a pro athlete is worse than a roller coaster of ups and downs emotionally. You have to put up a huge wall between your emotions as an athlete and separate that from the person you are, but that is much easier said than done. All you need to do is go to the Instagram/Twitter page of your favorite athlete and look at the replies that these HUMANS who have FAMILIES and KIDS, have to read and deal with. I’m saying this to point towards later when I start to talk about my mental state and how it deteriorated rather quickly.
THE START
Before I was a part of the great teams in Rethymno I was in Greece for a short period with the club Ilisiakos. It was my first time in Greece and I knew absolutely nothing about the European game. It was a team full of young guys, all good guys, and Coach Stergios Koufos (for who I have much love). I had not been worked that hard since my college time but once the games started I understood why the preseason was so rough. Three months passed and I had not seen not one euro from the club.
Now think: I was coming from the NBA G-league they call it now, where the top salary at the time was 24k and I wasn’t even making that! After taxes, my salary was 12k so that is two years chasing a dream. No money just empty promises. I was D-league defensive player of the year (google it), playing position “3” I might add, not position “4” or “5”. Guarding the best perimeter player every night with NBA rules and playing from the perimeter on offense. I was not a 20-point-a-night scorer although I did have multiple games where I went over 30, and I was not getting that push to get into the NBA. Still, they kept telling me “we are looking for roleplayers who can play defense.” Big lies as I say.
Back to my point, no money, fly to Greece. This was 2009, no WhatsApp, no Viber. If you wanna talk to your family you either need to pay a thousand-dollar phone bill or use skype. What do you need to use Skype kids? INTERNET. Of course, it’s in the contract: house, car, internet, money (after I pass the physical). I arrive, the house is ready, great. Car within a few days, perfect. For two or three weeks, my first time out of the States alone I had no internet. So imagine you are in a foreign country with a seven-hour time difference from all your friends and family with no way of talking to them. The first four days or so were really rough because all I could do with jet lag was stare at the walls all night and think about how much I wanted a hamburger or what NBA game was on to watch. No Netflix or streaming in 2009 people. These teams bring players in and really show zero interest in making the players off court transition smooth. Clubs? I’m telling you if you help these players off the court ON A TIMELY MANNER, their on-court performance will improve a lot more than you realize.
So time passes and I’m not paid and I’m told it’s not a good time to bring up getting paid because we are like 0-7 or something. We started the season playing against every single good team in the league. So we were not expected to win anyway (which was also something new to me). All I know is I’m doing a job and not getting paid for it, and people are telling me “this is Greece.” I’m thinking “WTF does that mean. I’m doing all these hard-ass practices and you telling me “this is Greece”? F**K that! Pay me”.
Finally, we play Larissa, this is a “derby” game because we are two teams that have the goal of just staying in the top division. We win by 40 or something crazy like that and right on cue payday comes! The Internet starts working regularly! I had internet for like a month already but it was trash. I’m thinking “where in my contract did it say I only get paid if we win a game.”
I will never understand why these owners in Europe have these clubs and sign these players to contracts with no intentions of honoring the contract. It is the overwhelmingly number one complaint about Europe, not getting paid or getting paid 2,3,4 months late. It seems simple to me, if you don’t have the money don’t take ownership of a team. People have been beaten up for a lot less money than what a lot of these teams owe players, and I’m just waiting for the day that one of these players is going to do exactly that.
Rethymno
Time passed and I explored other things after a horrible intro to European basketball. I wanted nothing to do with it, so I left for a year and did something else. And then came Rethymno where I had maybe my best, most fun years ever on a basketball court and with a team. How did this small club make life so great? THEY HONORED THE CONTRACT!
They didn’t sign guys for 150,000 and only pay 70,000. It’s so simple! If you only have 40,000 for a guy tell him that, but give him that 40,000 on time, and he will play his heart out. This simple thing seems so hard for some clubs to do and I will never understand why. The other problem is Teams will sign a contract and not pay you on time, or not have your internet ready, or your house is not right, or the car is old, but if you are late to practice they want to fine you and call you into the office and say how unprofessional you are. That is why AGOR Rethymno went from A2 to A1 and immediately finished 3rd in the Greek Championship. Players got paid on time, living conditions were great so everyone came to practice and games ready to work thinking only about basketball because we had everything we needed off the court. “Damn Petway you want us to uphold our end of a contract? Nah I don’t think we should do that.” That is pretty much what you clubs say every year you don’t pay a player for his services whether you think he is playing well or not.
And then came Olympiacos…
Now it gets interesting. I get to Olympiacos with Coach Bartzokas (another coach I got much love for). All I am hearing all summer is “Why did we/they sign Petway? He is just the guy who likes to party and sing Kiamos (ed. note: A popular Greek singer)”. Meanwhile, I was top 10 in scoring, blocked shots, and rebounds, the year before in Greece. Me being a guy who plays with emotion, I have that same emotion in life, where I can be really high or really low.
The problem is, when I’m really low I never show this to the outside world. I appear always the happy, singing, joking Petway. Then I get home and I’m miserable. So I come to training camp putting EXTREME pressure on myself to succeed and show I belong. Well, this is where my mental health starts to take real hits. Also why I think now Social Media, especially Instagram and Facebook is the Devil.
Olympiacos just won back-to-back Euroleague so expectations are through the roof already I have to replace Pero Antic who was LOVED by fans and went to the NBA. Even more pressure I’m putting on myself. We had some intense assistant coaches. Milan Tomic, legend, (super cool) he was more focused on the guards, Coach Pappas (much love for him) worked with the 4s and 5s. Pappas was super intense but he would also tell you when you did something good and that balance in Europe is hard to fine. Most times coaches will just scream, scream, scream, and then you win and they act like you lost the game the next day in film.
The season starts to roll and I’m playing well. But in every Euroleague/Greek League game, I’m so nervous from my own pressure first then outside pressure, then coach pressure. I know it sounds backward but that is how my brain works. I’m almost vomiting before every game, just because in my head if I don’t play well, they gonna cut me and send me home because I don’t have the big name of a Dunston, Simmons, Law, Lojeski. I’m just Petway who came from Rethymno who people don’t think is good enough anyway.
This is in my head every day in practice and games. You cannot imagine the stress mentally I’m putting myself through. Then add that with the physical part of playing Euroleague and travel. Ok, Printezis has an injury so he misses some time, now I’m playing 30 mins and up because Bartzokas did not trust Dimitris Agravanis yet. He was a super young guy at the time, 19 years old maybe I’m not sure. Now my brain is doing double overtime, if we lose I’m thinking “F**K this is gonna be my fault some kind of way, we gotta win all these games or I’m outta here.”
Fast forward because of this mental stress my body starts to feel terrible, simply because I’m never relaxed. I’m always in a state of high alertness. What’s the media saying, do the coaches think I’m good enough, do my teammates think I’m good enough, do the fans think I’m good enough? Eating dinner, walking through Glyfada, my clock was always turning thinking the worst of myself, but I can’t show that to anyone. So my back starts to feel off like I know something is coming if I don’t chill out, but Printezis is coming back soon, so the team just needs me to get through two more games.
Me, being the good soldier, the “tough guy” coaches always want, plus I feel indebted to Bartzokas because he got me to this huge club, who would I be to say “Nah, coach I’m hurt right now.” I’m praying, meditating, everything hoping to just make it until Printezis gets back and I can get a few days to sit my ass down and rest. Well, in the first game we go to Zielona Gora. During the warm-ups, I felt off, didn’t wanna jump too high – really didn’t wanna jump at all – to save whatever I had for the game. First play of the damn game, I think Spanoulis passes it to me and I jump for a layup. I feel a click in my back, boom, tingling from my back all the down my leg.
Now this is how messed up my head is/was. The first thing I thought was “F**K man now they definitely about to cut me and send me packing.” That’s crazy, right? I wasn’t mad at anyone because I told them my back was hurting already. I didn’t think about my own health, like what the hell is this pain shooting down to my leg. I was thinking about being cut and letting the team down. I know that shit sounds like I’m saying some BS just to make myself seem like I’m some kind of soldier, but no. Mentally that is how messed I was or still am really that.
I’m like “Damnit, maybe people were right I don’t belong here because my body can’t even hold up.” Later I found the injury really happened because I was putting myself under too much stress and the brain is the most powerful muscle in the body. You mess around and don’t rest your brain and it will make you rest. That is exactly what it did to me. Made me sit the hell down. Shout out to Bartzokas though because when we found out I would be out for at least a month, he did tell me to get healthy and to not worry because the team would wait for me. Before he told me that though, this is what happened.
Imagine a disc in your back pressing down on a nerve to the point where you can’t walk, or even straighten your leg just to put on socks or pants without severe pain. Remember those two games, well the second game was a Cup game against guess who, Panathinaikos. I’m seeing our team doctor he sees the pain but, aye we got all hands on deck for this Cup game because it’s the war game. I don’t remember the doctor’s name, he is not there anymore but man he had the brilliant idea to give me an epidural with cortisone to be able to play the game.
Now I’m no doctor, but I had only heard of epidurals being given to pregnant women having babies. I had never heard of it being used on athletes, and women after having that s**t done I had a new respect for what yall go through during and after pregnancy. Yo, I couldn’t even sit down regularly for a couple of days because of the injection being at the base of the spine. Two days later, I’m practicing with this s**t. Even though I can’t feel the pain in my leg, I can’t run normally either because the body still knows something is happening that shouldn’t be happening and I’m looking around wondering if anybody is gonna stop me because I clearly shouldn’t be running.
Well nobody stopped be (lol). I can laugh about it now but while it was happening I was like “yo, is this what it takes to play at this level?” The game comes, it’s pretty evident I shouldn’t be out there, so they take me out pretty quickly, maybe I played 5 minutes. If I played more than that I’d be surprised. So on one side, I’m thinking “man at least they took me out so I’m not costing the team” and on the other side I’m like “WHY THE F**K did I do this injection in the first place to play 5 fu***king minutes!”
This is the stuff we do for this game we love that people just don’t know. Then there would be some a-hole on Twitter/Instagram telling you how terrible of a player you are. The back story (pun intended) continues though. This team doctor could not figure out where the real problem was or how to fix it, so the conclusion was to put me on a table for surgery. I went for a lot of things to be a “good soldier” but I wasn’t just gonna get back surgery without seeing someone else. It has been a whole month and all the treatment and tests have done nothing to make the pain less, so finally, I go and see another doctor with the help of my guy Marios Tsangaras who was one of our trainers but also had his own clinics in Athens where they do great work (shout out to them).
A whole month with our TEAM DOCTOR: no results. This is no lie. In 30 minutes this doctor, who I wish I could remember his name, found the problem, gave me three small shots of fluid into the SI joint, I got up from the table and was lifting my leg walking normally touching my toes doing backflips. Ok. I wasn’t doing backflips but you get the point. I thought “how crazy is this, I missed a whole month for something that could be fixed and sit out a week max.” This was OLYMPIACOS, an organization who did everything top-notch, everything was taken care of, whatever I needed help with, but the TEAM DOCTOR seemed like he was in over his head, so I was thinking “how did this guy come to be the doctor, and why is he still the doctor if another doctor can diagnose and fix me in such an easy fashion.”
Throughout his pro career from 2007 to 2018, Petway played for such teams as Olympiacos Piraeus, Pinar Karsiyaka, Dinamo Sassari, Aris Thessaloniki, and Rethymno. He won the 2015 Greek League and made the EuroLeague championship game with Olympiacos and was particularly famous for his spectacular type of play.