You've seen the headlines in steady succession since the NBA lockout began on June 30th. "So-and-so weighs overseas options" ... "Player X signs with Spanish club team" ... "Turkey, China, Italy, Belarus and Dijibouti lure Kobe Bryant." OK, that last one might have some fiction to it. But there's some truth, too.
The biggest difference between the last NBA work stoppage in 1998-99 and the one the league is mired in today is that now there is a pipeline for players to find jobs overseas that didn't exist back then. There is an opportunity for players to not only to stay in shape while feeding their competitive fire, but to make real money doing it. New Jersey's Deron Williams is reportedly making $5 million to play for Besiktas in Turkey and Bryant was offered up to $6.7 million to lace them up for Virtus Bologna in Italy.
Lakers reserve guard Steve Blake won't be adding any stamps to his passport anytime soon, however.
"If we’re not having a season then I’m going to take the time to enjoy my kids and be with my wife and spend more time in Portland at my regular home, and just use the opportunity to just continue to work out and improve myself," Blake said in a recent phone interview. "I’ve prepared myself for this financially, so I don’t need to go overseas and do it for the money."
Blake and his wife, Kristen, have three young boys -- Nicholas, Jamison and Zachary -- but if he were a less-attached man he could see himself traveling the globe to continue to play basketball.
"More power to those guys," Blake said. "Let them go play basketball, the game they love, and make some money doing it. If they don’t want to let us play here, they’ll play somewhere else. If I didn’t have three kids and wife, I’d probably go play somewhere as well."
The rest of the wide-ranging interview can be read below. We cover what went wrong against Dallas, which famous athlete he went golfing with this summer, why it's OK that there's a viral video of him getting in a fist fight at practice, how his first meeting with Mike Brown went and more.
Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/lakers/post/_/id/22451/why-steve-blake-wont-be-playing-overseas
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