The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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WHERE ARE THEY NOW? lockout season. So he signed on with the CBA's Quad City Thunder, hoping for an NBA call-up later in the year. "The next year, the Bulls get the No. 1 pick," Baston recalled. "So who do they draft? A power forward. I was the only power forward they drafted my year. The following year, they picked Elton Brand, Ron Artest, and Michael Ruffin. "These guys are coming out younger, and it puts me in a bad posi- tion. I went to camp, but it was just a numbers game." He wound up with the Thunder from 1998-2000, with a brief NBA call- up. But Baston soon cast his fortunes oversees, playing in Montecatini, Italy, in 2000 and 2001, before moving on to Barcelona from 2001-03. Montecatini — a small town be- tween Florence and Pizza — isn't the center of the basketball world. How- ever, Baston developed relationships in his stays that reverberated a decade later. In all his foreign stops, new ex- periences beckoned. "The culture shock was amazing, as far as seeing a whole pig leg hang- ing from the ceiling of a store, the fish with the heads on them," Baston re- called. "It's just things you wouldn't see in America. "Having a siesta … you can't just go to a drugstore and get anything you want, any time of the day. There are certain times for everything. The lan- guage barriers were fun — it's learn- ing a new culture. It really made me appreciate my home country more." He appreciated it most when his dad became seriously ill back in the states. "When I was in Spain, my dad gets sick," he said. "I found out in Janu- ary, and I just left. I came back home to see what's going on. It's stage four cancer." When his Spanish team threatened to cancel his $300,000 contract, Baston told team officials his father remained his priority. Suddenly unemployed, he soon fielded interest from the NBA's Toronto Raptors, and spent the 2003 season with them. "Playing with the Raptors was my first NBA moment," Baston said. "It was bittersweet, because my dad is sick, and he can't see my games in person. But I'm home, playing in the NBA, finally reaching my dream. "My dad passed during the season, and I finished the season out. Emotion- ally, I was a wreck." He eventually found solace across the sea once again, signing on to play with Maccabi Tel Aviv, in Israel, a lo- cale his father always advised against. In what Baston describes as an "I don't care" moment, he made the move. Playing with future NBA perform- ers Sarunas Jasikevicius and Anthony Parker, Baston discovered instant magic. "We're all coming together, five new guys, and our chemistry was just amaz- ing," he said. "We were like brothers from another mother, and we reached the European Championships Final Four, with a lot of drama in between. "We ended up winning the champi- onship by 44 points, and we had the whole country at our feet. We're like gods over there to this day." They won two European Champion-