Dwight Howard is playing in Georgia. Black Fortress, Tbilisi, first game, twelve points in seventeen minutes, three steals, and a defeat, seventy-five to seventy against Iverioni. The club has started its season with two defeats, and I know what that’s like, a start to the season, mind you. You recount the tokens at the club bar and tell yourself it will turn.
What stopped me was the list. I read it on Eurohoops and had to put my coffee mug down. The NBA from 2004 to 2022. Then Taiwan in 2022-23. A tournament in Dubai in 2024. The BIG 3 in the United States in 2026. A friendly in Mongolia, also in 2026. And now Georgia.
Our minibus knows Ciney and Andenne. It starts, I always say so, and I’m proud of it. But if I showed it that list, it would stop in the car park of the sports hall to have a think. Taiwan, Dubai, Mongolia, Tbilisi: for us, a season like that means the whole minibus repainted with the names of the cities on the doors, and no room left for the chip shop sponsor. The sponsor has demands, I’m always formal with him, I wouldn’t ask that of him.
I’m not jealous, I’m a club president. A gentleman who has been in the Hall of Fame since 2025, who was on the “Redeem Team” at the 2008 Games, and who still takes on another hall, another scoresheet and another bench on the far side of the map: I think that’s rather lovely. He likes playing, you can read it in the list.
I just wonder, at every new city, who gave him the key. Someone always opens the hall before and locks it after, in Taiwan as in Tbilisi. Nobody mentions them in the articles.
As for mine, I’ve still got it to hand back tonight, and the chairs from the club bar won’t stack themselves.
It’s true, we checked: Eurohoops.
