Eastern Europe
At the end of the 2010-11 regular season, there were 433 players in the NBA. 345 of these players are United States citizens, the other 88 represent 39 countries spread across 6 continents. Arranged by oversimplified regional groupings, the next few posts will examine tattoos geographically, continuing now with Eastern Europe. To view other regions, click HERE for Africa and HERE for Western Europe.
Half the reason I wanted to do this regional breakdown is so that I could link to this incredible Jason Johnson guest post from Free Darko about playing a pickup game in Bosnia against locals. It completely remodeled my perspective of Eastern European players (which was totally uninformed) and is worth quoting at length:
In the post, they possessed that wiry strength that, despite what we say, we don’t really believe exists. Every rebound was a struggle. They fought for the ball like it was something precious. None of them seemed to be able to dunk, yet all of them could jump high enough to block my attempts … on the rare occasions that they actually let me get into the lane. Their physical interior defense made low-post play seem like an inefficient use of energy and forced us to rely on out nonexistent outside shooting. For three games we were thoroughly outclassed, as the beatings got progressively worse. I had lost my share of basketball games in the past, but never had I left a court so defeated. Other losses had been disheartening and even humiliating, but none had ever shaken my beliefs.
Of the 18 players in the NBA who are Eastern European citizens, only four have tattoos. None of the four Serbian players have tattoos, and up until yesterday, none of the eight players from the former Soviet Union did either. Both of the players from Montenegro have tattoos, as does the sole player from Poland. I’m not willing to extend any of these observations to some kind of interpretation, but part of rethinking how these guys play means acknowledging regional differences instead of assuming all European players arrive in the US with the same game constructed from football flops and wily manipulations. If I’m thinking about regional difference, I can’t help but notice that players born in the Soviet Union don’t have tattoos, that the tattooed players hail from more contested zones.
I mentioned before that Pekovic’s medieval warrior tattoo made me uneasy, considering the actual violence and heaps of skulls that accumulated during his childhood, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Dan Gadzuric, whose mother is Serbian, has a tattoo involving a blood puddle that addresses this history. I’m not interested in claiming one tattoo is more significant or emotionally weighted than another, but as a kid hearing about war crimes on NPR I was terrified, speechless. I don’t have any idea how it would feel to grow up surrounded by such insanity. Following a list of violent, on-court actions by Eastern European players, and how such acts were dismissed by the media, Johnson concludes his post by directly addressing the psychic cost: “It’s unfathomable how much more easily we dismiss the aggression of young men raised in literal war zones than those born in figurative war zones.”
Georgia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
Latvia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
Lithuania
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 3 without)
Montenegro
Tattoo percentage: 100% (2 players with tattoos, 0 without)
Poland
Tattoo percentage: 100% (1 player with tattoos, 0 without)
Russia
Tattoo percentage: 50% (1 players with tattoos, 1 without)
Serbia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 4 without)
Slovenia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 3 without)
Ukraine
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
Eastern Europe
At the end of the 2010-11 regular season, there were 433 players in the NBA. 345 of these players are United States citizens, the other 88 represent 39 countries spread across 6 continents. Arranged by oversimplified regional groupings, the next few posts will examine tattoos geographically, continuing now with Eastern Europe. To view other regions, click HERE for Africa and HERE for Western Europe.
Half the reason I wanted to do this regional breakdown is so that I could link to this incredible Jason Johnson guest post from Free Darko about playing a pickup game in Bosnia against locals. It completely remodeled my perspective of Eastern European players (which was totally uninformed) and is worth quoting at length:
In the post, they possessed that wiry strength that, despite what we say, we don’t really believe exists. Every rebound was a struggle. They fought for the ball like it was something precious. None of them seemed to be able to dunk, yet all of them could jump high enough to block my attempts … on the rare occasions that they actually let me get into the lane. Their physical interior defense made low-post play seem like an inefficient use of energy and forced us to rely on out nonexistent outside shooting. For three games we were thoroughly outclassed, as the beatings got progressively worse. I had lost my share of basketball games in the past, but never had I left a court so defeated. Other losses had been disheartening and even humiliating, but none had ever shaken my beliefs.
Of the 18 players in the NBA who are Eastern European citizens, only four have tattoos. None of the four Serbian players have tattoos, and up until yesterday, none of the eight players from the former Soviet Union did either. Both of the players from Montenegro have tattoos, as does the sole player from Poland. I’m not willing to extend any of these observations to some kind of interpretation, but part of rethinking how these guys play means acknowledging regional differences instead of assuming all European players arrive in the US with the same game constructed from football flops and wily manipulations. If I’m thinking about regional difference, I can’t help but notice that players born in the Soviet Union don’t have tattoos, that the tattooed players hail from more contested zones.
I mentioned before that Pekovic’s medieval warrior tattoo made me uneasy, considering the actual violence and heaps of skulls that accumulated during his childhood, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Dan Gadzuric, whose mother is Serbian, has a tattoo involving a blood puddle that addresses this history. I’m not interested in claiming one tattoo is more significant or emotionally weighted than another, but as a kid hearing about war crimes on NPR I was terrified, speechless. I don’t have any idea how it would feel to grow up surrounded by such insanity. Following a list of violent, on-court actions by Eastern European players, and how such acts were dismissed by the media, Johnson concludes his post by directly addressing the psychic cost: “It’s unfathomable how much more easily we dismiss the aggression of young men raised in literal war zones than those born in figurative war zones.”
Georgia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
Latvia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
Lithuania
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 3 without)
Montenegro
Tattoo percentage: 100% (2 players with tattoos, 0 without)
Poland
Tattoo percentage: 100% (1 player with tattoos, 0 without)
Russia
Tattoo percentage: 50% (1 players with tattoos, 1 without)
Serbia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 4 without)
Slovenia
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 players with tattoos, 3 without)
Ukraine
Tattoo percentage: 0% (0 player with tattoos, 1 without)
