OTISFIELD | BY STEVE SOLLOWAY She lives with fear, she told her small audience. Every day, every night. She spoke of children, much younger than her 17 years, who have so little hope.
She cried out her dream that her own children would know what it would be like to play and laugh without looking over their shoulders at death.
In a reversal of roles, Derek Rose and D.J. Augustin, twins Brook and Robin Lopez and others in their group locked their eyes on the young, sorrowful face of an Arab woman who would only give her name as Mirina. She had their attention and their emotions.
The future of the NBA had come to Seeds of Peace International Camp on Monday. Most of the morning and afternoon was filled with laughter and the bounce of basketballs. Six years ago, sports agent Arn Tellem brought some of the players he represents to this place. Many were recent draftees. He wanted them to see outside their world of rich bonuses and unimaginable opportunities and understand the lives of boys and girls not much younger than themselves who live in harm’s way.
Now they come every summer, the trip coinciding with a stop in New York City for an NBA photo-shoot for the rookies. Some, like B.J. Armstrong, who was a Chicago Bulls teammate of Michael Jordan on championship teams of the 1990’s, come back year after year. Brian Scalabrine of the Celtics is a repeat visitor.
Jordan Farmar of the Los Angeles Lakers made his second trip this summer. “I have a white mother and a black father and I was raised a Christian. My stepfather is Israeli and a Jew. I know what it’s like to be different.”
Meaning, he knows the hatred of ignorance. He will visit Israel in the next week or two, hoping to make a small difference. He will return to Seeds of Peace for as long as he’s welcome.
After lunch, seven Seeds of Peace campers, back for their second summer, spoke to the NBA players and Sue Wicks, a former WNBA star with the New York Liberty. Twenty years ago, she was an All-American at Rutgers. She played for 15 seasons overseas, including four in Israel.
Monday, she shared in the laughter and asked a lot of questions. She hugged Roi Bareket, a 17-year-old from a town between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He spoke optimistically about his country’s future, so long as people will talk to each other.
Wicks reached out to Mirina. “I’m not here, thinking I can accomplish something in one day,” Wicks said. “We’re here to show we support what they’re doing. They’re communicating with each other.
“When I step onto a court, I don’t care about your skin color or your religion or what nationality you are. I want to know who is going to be the strong teammate, who is going to crack under pressure, who is going to be there for me.
“Everything else just falls away.”
Bareket didn’t know Wicks. He hadn’t heard Armstrong’s name before or Derek Rose or Russell Westbrook or any of the others. He meant no disrespect when he said, “They’re just people, like you and me. The fact that they are basketball players isn’t important. I only care if they will talk to me and that they will listen to what I say.”
When all is Said and done, Bareket has it right.
Mirina—no, she said, she couldn’t give her last name. She is known back home. Someone would read what she says and not understand. It would be dangerous. Mirina, too, didn’t know American basketball players.
Forty years ago, Tellem, the agent, was a kid from Philadelphia attending a traditional summer camp on Thompson Lake. Tim Wilson was a camp counselor. A friendship started. Shortly after, Wilson took his first job as the head football coach at Dexter. Much later, he became Seeds of Peace camp director and remembered Tellem, inviting him back to Maine.
“The players trade e-mail addresses with some of the campers,” Tellem said. “They stay in touch.”
Antawn Jamison, a 10-year NBA player now with the Washington Wizards, visited Seeds of Peace several years ago with Tellem. “When something happens in the Middle East, Antawn calls me, asking what’s going on, are the kids we know all right.”
In the camp gym, Brook Lopez and his twin, Robin, joined with the campers, encouraging them to shoot the basketball and laughing with them when the ball fell through the net, or didn’t. The twins played together at Stanford. The New Jersey Nets, with the 10th pick of the draft, picked Brook. The Phoenix Suns grabbed Robin with the 15th pick.
“Experiencing this opens your eyes,” Brook Lopez said. “I’m getting back what I thought I would. Probably more.”
“All of us could give money,” said Armstrong, now an agent with Tellem. Rose, the top draft pick this year, signed with Armstrong. “But time is the most valuable thing we have and we don’t mind giving it to these kids.”
Yes, the next time you hear of another pro athlete stuffing $100 bills into thongs at a strip club, know there are others who will pay with their time to hear a child speak.
You could hear sniffles as a breeze off Thompson Lake rustled leaves when Mirina spoke. Some eyes were wet. You can’t imagine the life of an Arab living in Israel, she said. Just as she can’t imagine your life, living in the security of America.
She is 17 and does not want to be a basketball player or a teacher or a doctor. She wants to be a facilitator.
“I would like to be the string that pulls people together.”