Kid graduates from college, gets a job. He works 8 to 5 in an office, is bored to death. Sometimes he dreams of traveling to faraway places.
But never gets there.
David Vik got his college degree, but didn’t take a job. Nor did he just dream of seeing the world. He saw it: by following the bouncing ball.
It led him to places he’d only heard about: Australia. Finland. Poland. Bolivia. Japan. Lebanon. Portugal. Uruguay. Greece. Italy. Russia. Spain. Israel.
No dead-end jobs for him. Vik’s the name, basketball’s his game. If he had a calling card, it would read: “Have basketball, will travel.”
For the past 11 years – or ever since he took a business degree from Washington State in 1995 – he’s unpacked his bags to play ball all over the world. With a stop now and then in the USA.
He’s recuperating from a leg injury in Southern California and hopes soon to have dual citizenship that will allow him to play anywhere in Europe.
“When I get the passport, I can go to one of the better leagues (in Europe) and I will be considered French or Italian or whatever,” he said by telephone recently from the home of Terry Walsh, an old buddy from Everett High School, outside of Los Angeles.
And a better league means better money.
Vik hasn’t grown rich playing basketball, but he’s made enough to buy a house in Las Vegas and to keep on doing what many of his fellow grads can only dream about doing.
Aside from the money, it sounds like a better gig than the NBA. “I know so many people who would trade places with me in a heartbeat,” he said.
Unlike most NBA players, Vik gets out of his hotel and explores the cities he visits. “I’m there not only to play basketball,” he said, “but to see the different cultures and to meet new people.”
What a resume he’s putting together. “I have so much real-world experience that I think would be something employers would like to have,” he said.
He left WSU with no plans for the immediate future, but when you’re 7 feet tall and have played four years of college ball, even with modest results, there’s going to be someone out there offering you a job to grab rebounds and block shots.
It might not be in L.A., Chicago or Miami but there are towns all over the country with professional basketball teams. Such as Bismarck, N.D., which had a team in the International Basketball Association (IBA).
His most vivid memory: the weather. “Cold as hell,” he said. “It got down to minus 70 degrees with the windchill. We went to and from the gym in a van that had a broken door and wouldn’t shut completely in that cold. Funny how certain things stay with you.”
Tasmania in Australia was next up. “I was down there for six months and had a great time,” he said. “The basketball wasn’t so good, but I was right there on the beach and there were so many different things to see.”
He then went from one extreme to another. Australia to Finland. Beaches and sun to cold and snow. Again.
Arriving in Helsinki in late summer, he found that it stayed daylight until 10 or 11 at night. Then, in the winter, it was dark by 3 in the afternoon. “That took a while to get used to,” he said.
Let’s back up for a moment. Vik was 11 when his father died, leaving his mother, Debbie, with three kids to raise. So there wasn’t any money for vacations. The only other state he had been to was Oregon, where he was born.
So now, not long after he graduates from college, he’s been halfway around the world playing games. And his buddies back home are grinding away 8 to 5.
David Vik? He’s on his way to Poland.
Vik gets to the training camp outside Warsaw after cramming his 84-inch body into a “tiny car” for a three-hour ride and finds that the team is expecting a player about 50 pounds heavier. The agent representing him apparently miscommunicated his lanky frame.
“I get there and everyone is like, ‘Who is this guy?’” he recalled. “They were expecting someone completely different. Needless to say, I was not real comfortable from the get-go.”
After three practices, “they decided I wasn’t the person they were looking for.”
There have been other misadventures. Like the time he got sick and lost 15 pounds playing for a team in Bolivia. “I was basically weighing what I did in college,” he said. “Very skinny at the time.”
That wasn’t a life-and-death situation but an incident in the Middle East could have been. Vik was playing for a team in Beirut, Lebanon, a country he wasn’t really keen on until he got there. “I had heard so many bad things about Beirut and the people there,” he said. “When you get there, though, and get to speak with them and see things, you change your viewpoint.”
His team was returning to Beirut one day when it stopped for gas. During the course of the fill-up, words were exchanged between some players and the station attendant, each representing a different religious group. The attendant then, according to Vik, spit on a player and “all hell broke loose.”
The attendant and some of his cronies wielded knives when they were chased into the gas station, the players fending them off with chairs. Calm was finally restored with nobody getting hurt. “It was a crazy and an eye-opening experience,” Vik said. “Needless to say, a first (for me).”
There have been many “firsts” since this 34-year-old embarked upon a life of a nomadic basketball player, taking his game to Japan among them. “That was my first nice contract,” Vik said. “It was for six months and $50,000.”
Some things took some getting used to. Like his mode of transportation. With most teams he has played for overseas, Vik was given a car to use. Not in Japan. So he opted for a bicycle. “A big bike with a basket on the front. Something I would never ride in the USA, but, hey, when in Tokyo, do as they do.”
In between jaunts to faraway places, he has hung out at the Wooden Center in Los Angeles, testing his skills against such players as Olden Polynice, Paul Pierce, Shaquille O’Neal and Magic Johnson. “I had the chance to guard him (Johnson) for a full game,” Vik said. “He was competitive as hell and this was years after he was diagnosed (with HIV).”
The longest he ever planted roots was for six years, in Portugal. There he became a father to a daughter, Filipa, now 4. Is Filipa a budding basketball star? “She’s tall,” Vik replied.
Vik was in Uruguay when he injured his left knee, then, because he was overcompensating, his right knee began to swell up. Now he’s taking it easy at Walsh’s place east of Los Angeles.
When completely healthy, he hopes to land a job in one of the top European leagues, perhaps in France or Spain.
“I have a guy claiming he can get me a job for $10,000 or $15,000 a month with my new passport,” Vik said, “but one thing I’ve learned is not to believe anything until you’re on the plane.”
He has so many stories to tell from his years as a globetrotting athlete, bags full of rich memories that have rounded him more as a person than just a basketball player. “There are so many people in our society who don’t get out of the city, let alone the state or the country,” he said. “When we went to Rome, it was unbelievable. You turn a corner and there’s the Coliseum.”
He’s made road trips to Russia, Spain, Italy and Israel, and visited the Greek island of Mykonos.
“The way I see it is I’m 34 and I might as well play as long as I can,” he said. “Life is short.”
And David Vik is cramming everything he can into it.
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