Technical Foul

 

Long gone are those days when local basketball games doubled as social gatherings as much as they were sporting events. Long gone are the Ahli-Orthodoxi epic battles that polarised the whole nation around basketball affiliation, and long gone are the days when a Syria-Jordan basketball game would be the talk of the town for days. 

 

“This is depressing man” said Humam Haddadin a devout basketball fan who had played for Orthodoxi’s under-16 squad as a youngster. “I remember one time I went with my classmates to a final game, and we barely found a place to sit. We ended up sitting on the stairs”. While pursuing a college degree overseas, Humam has been away from the Jordanian basketball courts for five years, during which the game’s local landscape has changed drastically. “Where are the people? This nothing like it used to be. What happened?”

 

The answer is complicated, but there’s little doubt that 2002 marked a genuine watershed. It was the year Fastlink, Jordan’s biggest mobile operator, first fielded its own basketball team in the country’s league; fresh from a five-year monopoly, the company had sufficient resources to persuade the Jordanian Basketball Federation of the benefits of such a move – after all, the perennially penniless athletic federations have always been lobbying to convince businesses to support local sports.

 

In the Federation’s defence, there was a healthy precedent. In the early 1990s, Aramex sponsored the Jazeera club, Jordan’s third most prominent, and instead of recruitment concentrated their efforts, and funds, on the youth set-up. In 1992, the Under-14s won their age-group title, while the Under-18s featured several members of the 1995 national junior team – the first Jordanian team to qualify for a world cup in any sport. When those same players reached senior level, Jazeera-Aramex won the 1997 league title and remained at the top table alongside the twin powerhouses of Ahli and Orthodoxi. 

 

Youth development wasn’t exactly Fastlink’s priority, though. Enabled by the Federation’s semi-professional rules, in which all players over the age of 24 were deemed free agents, the new club waved large cheques at the pick of the country’s talent. Around the same time, Amman Ahliyeh University, seeking a promotional vehicle for its new sporting facility, also fielded its own team, the imaginatively-named Arena. Armed with scholarships and a strong revenues from the university and its new athletics complex, they were similarly attractive to the country’s top players. Few resisted the lure, and the rival teams were left with the option of trying to match their combined financial power or lose their players. 

 

 

Around the same time as the corporate dollars were gathering at the sport’s gates, another alienating factor emerged. Influenced by the brief popularity of the foreigner-enhanced Lebanese league and fearing the inability to compete against regional clubs in the Asian Champions Cup and the Dubai International Tournament, the Jordanian Federation allowed league clubs to recruit foreign players for the first time, with a limit of two per team.

The result was the sudden arrival of third-tier American players and washed-up never-weres who couldn’t make it in Mexico, Europe or even Lebanon. “You have players making $20,000 and $30,000 a month and they have nothing on their resumes to justify the money they are making,” says Fadi Sabbah, secretary general of Riyadi-Aramex, whose foreigner-free team scored wins over Zain and Orthodoxi on their way to fourth place last season. “Some of these guys were making $500 a week in the US development leagues and would be more than happy to play for $4,000-$5,000 a month.”

 

“Foreign players come to Jordan for leisure and rehab,” said Kamal el-Helou, adding to the chorus of doubts about the benefit to Jordanian basketball of foreign imports. “All we get is players who may need to work on a certain skill or who need to recover from an injury. Very few professional players train or even act professionally.” 

The wife of Orthodoxi star Chris Anderson seemed to agree when she said before Christmas: “My husband comes back from practice and it does not look like he even broke a sweat… I’m like, ‘are you sure you were at practice?’” Then, of course, there are myriad stories about players with hernias, bad tempers and nagging injuries who still pocketed $30,000 in signing bonuses, yet never played a minute.

 

Zain opened the season with the all-star line-up of Jordanian-Americans Sam Daghlas (torn knee ligament) and Enver Soobzokov (broken hand), Americans Jonathan Jones (released for bad behaviour) and Nate Johnson and the one pure Jordanian, Zeid al-Khass, the national team captain. Coming of the bench are newly-anointed Jordanian Rashiem Wright and German-Jordanian Jamal May’ytah. “We would have easily swept through the league if not for injuries,” answered Nate Johnson, the league’s top scorer, from behind a pair of stylish Yves Saint Laurent glasses before game four. He, like everyone else, knew it should not have been this hard for Zain.

“The younger players I coach ask me ‘what is going to happen to me when I finish playing for the Under-20 team? Am I going to sit on the bench?’” says Kamal el-Helou, mindful that talents like Mohammad Boushnaq, Mohammad Hamdan, Faisal Khair and Khaldoon abu Roqayya each wasted about three years lingering on Zain’s bench at the peak of their careers. National coach Mario Gomes recently lamented the loss of “a precious time that could’ve been used to develop those 21-24 years old players.” If they had, he continued, “Zain won’t have to sign expensive Americans”.  

 

Orthodoxi duly lost game four by 15 points in front of the same 400 mildly-interested fans. The game was not even that close, with Orthodoxi managing to score just 56 points. “Zain was playing zone defense inside of the foul line and Orthodoxi players could not make a shot. There was some terrible offense in that game. Miss after miss,” Mario Gomes lamented. 

It would be easy to attribute the absence of fans solely at Zain’s free-spending dominance, but there is considerably more to the story. Prior to Zain, Orthodoxi had won five straight titles between 1997 and 2002, and the Abdoun club is now spending almost as much money on players as their new rivals. In reality, the federation had to shoulder much of the responsibility. 

 

The case of young star Mousa Awadi is another example of the game’s general mismanagement. When  Zain’s Awadi refused, for still unknown reasons, to join the national team in the summer of 2007, the federation suspended him indefinitely. Zain threatened to withdraw from the league and play under the umbrella of the “Companies athletic federation” if the suspension is not overturned. Both parties reached a multi-level settlement: Awadi would play for Wehdat on loan for the subsequent season while Zain would be given the right to sign Rashiem Wright – who already had more players than roster spots. But having released a host of youngsters, Zain’s injury crisis as they approached the final four meant Awadi was now required – and the Federation sanctioned his return. 

 

For the full version of this article, see NOX 22.