by Micah Hart
For NBA players, the offseason is a time to work on various aspects of your game, but it’s also a great time to travel around and see the world. Many players do this as vacations, but more and more are partnering up with NBA initiatives like Basketball Without Borders and UNICEF missions to make a difference around the world while expanding their own horizons at the same time.
Retired players are getting in using travel as an opportunity to learn about and contribute to a community as well, as recently a group of NBA alumni participated in an excursion to Israel to learn more about the Middle East peace process and the country’s relationship with the United States.
Over the course of their week-long trip, former players such as Cedric Ceballos, Spencer Haywood, Dale Ellis, and 50-point scorer Willie Burton traveled all around the country, visiting religious sites, speaking in front of the Israeli Knesset, and putting on a clinic for Palestinian and Israeli youths.
Sounds like an amazing trip. According to Stephen Bardo, it was pretty eye-opening:
And while their trip was packed with meetings and briefings and clinics, it doesn’t mean there still wasn’t a little time for some R&R:
Cedric Ceballos takes a dip in the Dead Sea
Basketball has taken people a lot of places, and it’s great to see so many current and former players continuing to pay it forward.
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