Last night, at dinner, under a light autumn rain, I ran into one of my childhood friends. We played basketball together and maintained our old friendship.
After getting off the bike, we walked a bit.
"How is the boy?" I asked.
His 16-year-old son trains in basketball. I had seen him several times in one of the old school gyms in Tirana.
Okay, he told me, it's 2.1 meters long.
"Oh," I said, surprised, "are you still with the same team?"
No, he said, I took him to a school in Italy. Italian scouts saw him and took him. Four other boys went there before him. It's a specialized school that deals with talent.
But here, I asked him, is there no way to continue?
"You've seen the conditions," he told me, "they're miserable. No care, no program to revive basketball."
"Did you see the Albanians in Turkey?" he asked me. Three national basketball players, European runners-up.
Look at Iceland, a team that Albania once beat. Look at Finland, how far they have come. Countries without a tradition in basketball!
"This is where our children run away from home," he added with a long sigh. "How much hope we had..."
The falling rain made the conversation a little more somber.
But why, I asked, have I heard that the Olympic Committee receives funding for sports classes?
He laughed ironically:
"Have you seen anything?" he said. "I don't see any funding for our kids in basketball."
We continued walking.
Did you follow the competition for the “Partizani” Sports Palace? I asked him to change the subject. We had spent our youth together in that field.
No, he told me.
Interesting, I said, a large field and a kind of ball-shaped tower.
At the crossroads we parted ways. As he got on his bike, he looked me in the eye and said:
The palace may be in the shape of a ball, but there is no one to throw the ball.
By Auron Tare
