Ballin' in Rio: Pro Basketball Life with TJ Benson (10/08/10)

Hey everyone! It’s Sunday afternoon and thought I’d sit down for a minute and recap the last week here in Brazil. I want to start off though and say Happy Birthday to my Mom from earlier this week. I just want to say I love you lots Mom and miss you!!

Last time we talked, I was going through two a day practices and still getting myself acclimated to life in Rio. Thankfully, this week definitely was more exciting. With 10 days of practice in between our 1st and 2nd games of the year, I was extremely excited and ready to get back on the floor against another squad. We squared off against Cabo Frio which is about two and half hours away from Tijuca. This was a big game for us because this team supposedly will be competing with us for 2nd place in the championship. I say 2nd place because supposedly we have no shot at 1st place which Flamengo will easily get. Flamengo is said to be the best team in all of South America. Anyways, our game against Cabo Frio went extremely well. We ended up winning by 18 and I felt like I played pretty good. My stat line was a solid 7 pts, 5 ast, 5 reb and 3 stls in 31 minutes of action. As the 6th man, I came in at about the 5 min mark in the 1st quarter and in my opinion changed the outcome of the game. My defense is what really got us going but at halftime my coach told me I needed to be more aggressive offensively and just go make plays. I definitely was glad to hear that because it freed me up in the 2nd half to just play. This game showed me that we got a shot at competing with Flamengo though. They’re an extremely good team but if we play well against them, anything can happen.

After the game, it was an extremely long night though. We got dinner as a team at this Rodizio place which is where they come around with tons of meat on kabob rods. Some of the meat is amazing. After dinner, we ended up not getting back to Tijuca (Rio de Janeiro) until around 5 am because my teammate Diego needed to get stitches at the ER which took forever. The next day consisted of just chilling at the apartment and watching some Friday Night Lights which is a damn good show for basic cable television. That night though was my first nightlife experience in Brazil. A group of about 8 of us went to a festival of sorts called Beija Flor. From what I understand (I still don’t quite understand what its purpose is), it’s a competition of different Samba schools who play their particular Samba song and the winner gets to play at Carnival later in the year. Our school of Samba was 39. Basically, when they play your Samba, your whole crew goes out to the middle and starts singing and going crazy. I was a little more reserved than the other people because truthfully I didn’t know what the hell was going on still but it was fun regardless. Beija Flor was let’s just say that it wasn’t anything like I was expecting or have experienced in my life. First off, the Brazilian women can f***ing move. I’ve heard plenty of rumors and whatnot but experiencing it live was pretty amazing. It was definitely nice to finally get out of the apartment and experience some Brazilian culture though. Being out with my teammates and our equipment manager Antonio (who is the one who hooked us up with the whole thing and a funny little dude) was much needed to break up the monotony of basketball. I’m here to play basketball but I want to have fun as well.

This is a big week for our team though. We got a home game tomorrow against Iguasuao who we should smash on honestly and another game on Friday. I don’t really care who we play, I just want to play. Anyways, not much more for me to say except Happy Birthday to my Mom again and I miss my family and friends back home. It’s definitely tough at times because on my own here especially the only American but I’m surviving. Until next time everyone. Llllllate.

TJ Benson aka The Americano