Violence, Culture Drove Eric Devendorf Out of Turkey; Now He's in Idaho
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Eric Devendorf, the Bay City bad boy battling to make pro basketball's big time, is slated to be on national television early next month.
Eric Devendorf, the Bay City bad boy battling to make pro basketball's big time, is slated to be on national television early next month.
He's just back from playing hoops in Turkey where coaches cut the heads off goats for luck before the game.
National sports columnist Rick Reilly of ESPN.com interviewed Devo and other players after their "excellent Turkish adventures" and urged Americans to avoid that country's basketball teams. Devendorf told Reilly:
"They take it almost as seriously as soccer," says Devendorf (Syracuse), who played for two months in Turkey and then bolted. "At one of our games, the fans came on the floor and tried to fight us! It's a whole different world over there. Women wearing burkas. People dropping in the street to pray all the time. It's just different. And the cities are real dirty. Man, if you don't have Slingbox (a device to access television outside Turkey) you got nothing. I'm never going back. No way."
"Turkish fans take their hoops as seriously as a lion takes lunch," wrote Reilly. They will heat up coins with lighters and throw them at players -- even their own. Also batteries, shoes and rocks."
Jimmy Baron, NBA guard from Rhode Island moonlighting during the lockout, reported the goat decapitation after which the Turkish players stuck fingers in the blood and wiped it on their foreheads. "Then they started motioning for me to do it," Baron told Reilly. "I'm, like, 'You gotta be crazy!" and I got the heck out of there."
It's not unusual for player who are not pleasing the team's ownership to have their hot water, electricity and Internet cut off in their company-supplied apartments, according to Reilly.
Devo, now a backup guard for the Idaho Stampede that will be featured on ESPN-3 (available only on selected cable channel outlets) Monday, Jan. 9 at 11 a.m. and Wednesday, Jan. 11, at 1:45 p.m.
After heavy-duty runs in overseas leagues, Devendorf caught a break earlier this year when he was picked up by Idaho several years after being inexplicably dropped by the Reno Bighorns after only several games.
The NBA-D (Development) League is the stepping stone to the NBA and players are often being shuttled to the NBA training program in preparation for the big time regular NBA.
On the 10-member current Stampede roster for Coach Randy Livingston are towering 7-5 center Will Foster out of Gonzaga, former Kentucky star Antoine Walker, and 6-5 guard/forward Seth Tarver from Oregon State.
The Stampede plays the Erie BayHawks on Jan. 9 and the Bakersfield Jam on Jan. 11, both games originating at the Reno Events Center venue.
Devendorf, a 24-year-old is averaging 8.5 points per game on an average of 18.6 minutes per game playing time. Rival guards 6-6 Milton Ambres is scoring at an 11.4 points per game clip in 21.6 minutes average; 5-8 David Bailey is knocking down 14.5 points in an average of 31.5 minutes; and 6-4 Tony Bobbitt is scoring 14.9 points average in 34.3 minutes.
Former Syracuse star Devendorf, who was Big East rookie of the year in 2006, is competing with Ambres, a 228 pound load out of Southern Nazarene, pint-sized Bailey from Loyola (IL) and Bobbitt, a former Cincinnati standout.
Bailey, a D League veteran, was recently acquired by trade from the Sioux Falls Skyforce. He has a career average of 13.5 ppg since joining the Skyforce in 2004.
In February 2010 Devendorf signed with the Waikato Pistons of the New Zealand National Basketball League. He scored 49 points in his season debut and immediately was one of the league's stars.
In April Devendorf was released by the Pistons after a minor bar fracas involving former Syracuse player Josh Pace and former St. Bonaventure center Jamil Terrell. He was signed to NBL team Wellington Saints shortly after, and averaged 26.1 points per game playing the point.
Signed in February 2011 to play with the Melbourne Tigers in the Australian National Basketball League, Devendorf was released by the club after a 6-12 record midway through the season. In early March, he made his debut in the Turkish Basketball League with Torku Selcuk Universitesi. Although scoring 22 points in his first game, he stayed only two months and no doubt feels lucky to get back to the good old USA.
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