Pallotti Grads Reflect On European Hoop Travels

David Morris, a former basketball standout at St. Vincent Pallotti High in Laurel, graduated from the University of Dayton with a degree in communications.

But his education continued in a new way after those years in Ohio.

A former starting point guard at the Division I level, Morris played pro hoops in Germany, Romania and Spain after a four-year career at Dayton.

One of those learning experiences came a few years ago when he was playing for a pro team in Romania, a country in eastern Europe where life for many is very difficult.

His team, which included some Serbian players, made a trip to Belgrade to play a Euro Cup game. While in Serbia's capital, Morris saw the buildings bombed from NATO air strikes in the late 1990s.

"It still affected a lot of Serbians, even now, which I didn't know. My teammates were pretty mad about the situation. I had no idea it affected Serbians like that," said Morris, who grew up in Hyattsville.

As a point guard for Pallotti in the late 1990s he led the Panthers to the title game of the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) tournament as a senior.

The Panthers fell in the closing seconds to Hyattsville powerhouse DeMatha, which had two future NBA players (Joe Forte and Keith Bogans) on its team.

While Forte and Bogans went to the NBA, Morris was one of several players from that Pallotti team to play overseas. The list includes Nate Green (University of Dayton); Kenny Whitehead (Charlotte, James Madison); and Austen Rowland, (Delaware and Lehigh).

This year's NBA draft, held June 23, again included several players chosen from Europe.

Rowland has played in Austria and Germany, and spent this season in France. "It is not a problem for me," he told Patch on Thursday of spending most of the year away from family and friends. "I have learned how to do it. My first few years it was a challenge."

A point guard from Hyattsville, Rowland spends his summers at his home in Florida. He is slated to play for a new team in France next season and will head back to Europe in August.

"Being a professional and getting along with players from other countries" can be difficult, Rowland said. "I try to learn things about other countries. Be humble and realize the United States is not the only country in the world."

Basketball has even taken Rowland to China, where he played in exhibition games while with a team from Germany. He has also been to London, Amsterdam, Belgium, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Luxembourg. Rowland was once in the same league in Germany with Whitehead, but they did not play against each other.

Rowland, who turns 30 this summer, said he hopes to play overseas four or five more years.

Another Pallotti product, Keith Lambkin, ended his college career at Canisius in 1999 and played pro ball in Germany and this season in Luxembourg.

Green played in Austria and Luxembourg in 2003-04, in his first year out of college, and later played in Mexico, Ecuador and most recently Argentina during the 2008-09 season, according to eurobasket.com.

Morris, 30, who now lives in the Beltsville area, ended his pro career about two years ago. He has remained close to Rowland, a guard who last month finished the pro hoop season with a team in France by averaging 13.1 points per game for Le Portel.

Rowland was the Patriot League player of the year in his only season at Lehigh. He played his first three years of college at Delaware.

Morris was a point guard at Dayton and help the Flyers make the NCAA tournament during his career. He and Green, a forward, were teammates at both Pallotti and Dayton.

Whitehead, a center, ended his career at JMU in 2003 and went on to play in Germany, Cyprus, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel and France, according to eurobasket.com

While overseas, Morris visited Eiffel Tower in Paris, the site of the Berlin Wall in Germany and the Charles Bridge in Prague. He was also able to visit Hungary, Belgium and Amsterdam.

"Germany is like my second home. Austen and I know lot of people there," Morris said.

So what were the highlights of playing in Europe? "Just the culture, getting to understand a new, different culture outside of the United States was great actually," Morris said. "Things were a lot more open there."

One drawback of playing overseas was when Morris did not get paid on time by his club. This is common among American players in some European countries. "That factored into my decision" to return to the U.S., Morris said.

On the other hand, American players in top leagues in Europe are normally given the free use of an apartment, a car and vouchers for food. Most American players get a tax-free salary and can make close to $100,000 per season in some of the western European leagues. Leagues in Romania, Hungary and eastern Europe usually have fewer resources for American college products.

"There are very few expenses," Morris said.

While in college, Morris went with Dayton for an overseas trip to Australia and that was just the beginning of his hoop travels.

Today, Morris works at as an account executive at Stone Street Capital, a structure settlement company in Bethesda. "Basketball helped me out a lot. I studied marketing at Dayton, even though my degree is in communications," he said.

And he got another education once he headed to Europe.