By Semih Tuna/ info@eurohoops.net
A combo guard, displaying his talent in Europe from 2007 to 2017, Jamon Gordon sat down with Eurohoops to discuss numerous highlights of a successful professional career.
From Turkiye, Germany, and Croatia, to the EuroLeague with Maroussi under the guidance of head coach Giorgos Bartzokas. “The best thing about Coach B, he is a players’ coach,” he described the current play-caller of Olympiacos.
“People do not understand what he did with that team. We did not get paid. Most of us still have not got that money from that year. I know I have not,” he talked about the Greek tactician working for Maroussi.
“Still to this day, I talk to him,” he added on Bartzokas, “He is all for his players. He is the team first, then the management. He has a great mind. Some of the plays he was calling for me, I never had got called. I post up a lot. He gave me the ball. And I was in my first year in EuroLeague. I did not know much. He taught me so much.”
From there to Olympiacos and back to Turkiye with stops at Galatasaray, Anadolu Efes, and Darussafaka. Gordon retired in 2017. Reviewing his overseas career, he struggled to select between forming special bonds with most of his former teams.
“I would say Maroussi because we had a bunch of guys that were trying to build a name,” he picked the Greek club as the best team of his career, “We all were trying, all playing for less money that we ended up playing for. As a team, we played for each other. The second was probably Galatasaray because we were in the same situation. Olympiacos, that is that most talented team I ever played on.”
Coming out of Virginia Tech in 2007, Gordon went from the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Summer League to preseason camp with the Washington Wizards. However, he did not reach the Regular Season and never played an official game in the league.
“I was not mentally ready when I was trying out. I was too caught up in a lot of other things that were not basketball, at the time,” Gordon told Eurohoops, “Once I got to Europe and I started understanding the game, and I put basketball to a point that it was really really basketball first, not girls, and money, and cars, and stuff like that. I always used to think about giving it another chance.”
“I kind of enjoyed playing in Europe, enjoyed that style of basketball compared to the NBA. But it was always a thought in my mind, what if, what if, what if,” he added.