Wall Street Journal

Team USA Select gives basketball players a chance to play overseas

By John Dell
JOURNAL REPORTER
Wednesday, March 2, 2005

The reality about playing at the Division II level is that the NBA dream is just that - a dream.There have been only a few CIAA players who ever even got a sniff of the NBA. There are only so many Ben Wallaces or Ronald Murrays. As the men's 60th CIAA Tournament begins today in Raleigh at the RBC Center, there aren't a lot of prospects that NBA teams are scouting. But there is an alternative for players hoping to continue their careers and being paid to do so.

Overseas pro leagues are always on the lookout for American players to fill out rosters. Most have a quota on the number of Americans allowed on rosters, but finding good talent isn't easy for those often cash-strapped teams. That's where Team USA Select comes into play. It's a tryout option for lower-level players who want a chance to play for pay overseas. The cost of a tryout is $200, but it's only the first rung of a long climb toward signing a pro contract overseas.If players are good enough to make it out of the Team USA Select tryouts, they go to Delaney Rudd's Camp in June in Greensboro for what basically becomes a final cut. Rudd, a former player at Wake Forest who starred for a team in France before retiring, had about 60 players at his camp last year. After Rudd's camp, those who make the cut can go overseas to play against the top-level pro teams in preseason games. That's when those teams get a look at the players on Team USA Select.

Sean Kilmartin and David Lawrence are the founders of Team USA Select. Both played at Appalachian State, and both played overseas after their college careers. About four years ago, they started spreading the word about the possibilities overseas.

"We wanted to give others the chance who maybe wouldn't have gotten a look because of where they went to college," Kilmartin said. "This gives kids exposure, and that's something that can possibly help them land a pro contact overseas."

They will hold tryouts May 7 at the Gold's Gym at the Sheraton Imperial in Raleigh and on May 21 in Greenville at Boyd Lee Park. There's also a Web site, www.usaselectbasketball.com, which gives potential players more information. The odds of making it to Rudd's camp are long, but Kilmartin said that if players are confident enough they can advance.

Three years ago, Shawn Alexander, a former player at Appalachian and Winston-Salem State, was good enough to make it out of Rudd's camp and was part of an American team that went overseas. "Shawn didn't sign a contract, but he saw a lot of the world that he otherwise wouldn't have seen," Kilmartin said. Another success story was Steve Lepore, a former player at Wake Forest. Lepore's senior season was a washout because of injuries, but he wound up playing for the Brighton Bears of the British Basketball League making $2,750 a month with a car, and a plane ticket back home to the United States at the end of the season.

Rick Pitts, who played basketball at Appalachian in the early 1980s and also played overseas, has tried to get the word out about the tryouts. He will spend some time at the CIAA Tournament talking with coaches. "Worst-case scenario is if guys don't get signed they still get to play a lot of games and see places like France and Belgium, and we are also getting some demand from South America pro teams," Pitts said.

Kilmartin said that he and Lawrence wanted to make sure that others had a chance to be seen by overseas teams."I can't say enough about the experience that I had," Kilmartin said. "We don't act as agents or anything like that. We just try to evaluate the guys who come to the tryouts, and if they are good enough the teams overseas will find out."