Hey World...my name is Luke Sikma and this is the first installment of my column with Beyond the Beat covering my first year playing professional basketball in Europe. 

For those who don’t know me I’m a 6-foot-8 forward from Bellevue, Washington and I played for and graduated from THE University of Portland (Go Pilots). Currently, I play for UB La Palma, a Spanish club that’s located on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands and competes in the LEB Gold Division which is basically the 2nd best league in Spain behind the heralded ACB league. The Canary Islands are part of Spain but are actually located off the western coast of Africa near southern Morocco. We’re one of two LEB Gold teams in the islands, and the rest of our competition is from mainland Spain, or as they call it here, “The Peninsula”.  There’s also one ACB team from the islands, CB Gran Canaria.

If you’re wondering how I ended up here I’ll give you a quick rundown: After my college season ended in the spring I was invited to play in the Portsmouth Invitational which consists of 64 college seniors who play in front of scouts from the NBA and basically every professional league around the world. I had a good showing there and the representatives from UB took notice and contacted my agent and eventually ended up offering me a contract. So in mid August I packed my bags and after four flights and two long days of travel I landed in beautiful La Palma.

Remembering my 2005 season in Lebanon during the assassination of Rafik Harriri, the former prime minister...


I didn’t know much about Lebanon before I arrived here last night.

It is a sacred place, and has the most astounding geography I have ever seen. It reminds me of Los Angeles, only here the mountains are a mere twenty minutes from the Mediterranean.  Conceivably one could go skiing, swimming and snowboarding in the same day. Unfortunately, Lebanon has a bad reputation. It is also a place where the country is basically split into different religious and political factions.

The country has been under political and economic influence by the Syrian government for years. Pro-Syrian officials regularly hold political positions of influence within the Lebanese government infrastructure. As a result, there is a great division between Lebanese people and religion. 

Siwar is a condominium complex located in Kaslik, half an hour outside of Beirut. Many expatriates live here, and the facility has everything from a gym to a grocery store. It is ideally located on the Christian side of town, not a problem because my colleagues are living in Beirut, in heart of the Muslim area.  Lebanon is divided this way in several cities along the coast, and there is a heavy Hezbollah presence in the Annibal mountains, near Bekkah.

My arrival last night was a near disaster, because there was some confusion as to where my living accommodations were.

Dobry Den, or "Good Day" as we say in the Czech Republic.

I would like to thank everyone for taking the time out to read my column here at Beyond the Beat.

I am from Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Seton Hall University in 1998 and have been playing overseas ever since.  My first stop overseas was the Czech Republic, where I played two seasons before heading to Belgium for five weeks and then Poland for a year.  I took one year off after "9-11".

I was scared to fly and thought about giving up basketball all together.  A coach that I played for during my first two years in the Czech Republic kept emailing me trying to get me to come back to Czech while I was home back in New York.  After working as a dispatcher for a security company in Manhattan for a year I decided I wanted to play ball again and accepted his offer and went back to the Czech Republic where I have been here ever since.

I am now in my thirtieth season overseas.

Update: The magic number for BBC Bayreuth and the teams' managing director Manfred Schottner: two.

In an interview conducted today between Schottner and Spox.com, a deal could be reached between Bayreuth and Kevin Durant within the next two days, with Schottner already booking two games on the schedule in December for Durant's BBL debut. 

Two games are scheduled right after Christmas -- December 27th, a home game against Bremerhaven and December 29th, an away game at FC Bayern.

To Schottner's knowledge, Durant will make his decision "during the latest on Tuesday or Wednesday".
As has been the case with many NBA players jumping overseas, insurance may hold up any arrival or deal at all between Durant and Bayreuth. Don't be alarmed when Wednesday comes and goes and Durant is still undecided about his future plans to play in Europe.

It could be the dollars and cents of it all. Insurance woes may raise the red flag. Either way, the doubters will fall in line saying this is just a PR stunt. It's not coming from Bayreuth's side. Give Bayreuth this much: they are making the story interesting.

It never fails.

I’ve been doing this whole writing thing and covering the NBA and sports in general for the last eight years. But regardless if it was my time in New York with the Knicks and across the Hudson River with the New Jersey Nets, or back doing interviews around the Rose Garden in Portland, and even that one time I had the chance to interview everyone’s favorite boxer Butterbean, 10 times out of 10 I will click off my voice recorder and walk away from the interview saying some version of the following.

“Man, I forgot to ask him about…”

I’m the type of writer where I never write down questions before talking with a player. Just don’t. Guess I take the approach that I don’t write down questions when I talk to my family or friends, or even complete strangers. I have ideas of what I want to include in my story and yes I’m in the gathering information and news business, but I’m not the type of guy to put pen to paper before interviews.

But had I been, there’s one question I would have asked Kyle Visser when we talked last Saturday night after the game in Ludwigsburg, Germany for a Grand Rapids Press feature running today.

Knowing Visser showcased his skills for more than half of the teams in the NBA from Orlando to Oakland when he failed to get selected out of Wake Forest, and knowing his desire to still make it in the league, I wonder if he feels lost in the mix playing overseas.

Is there such a thing as being this far from home and feeling forgotten?