By Jeff Baron, Staff Writer,
America.gov
The game will be broadcasted live on
ESPN at 12 PM
Eastern (9 AM Pacific) time
Washington - When the U.S. and Iranian national teams play one another in
basketball, Hamed Haddadi says, some boastful words will be exchanged -- but
that's only because the Iranian center and U.S. forward Rudy Gay are such good
friends.
Iranian center Hamed
Haddadi goes up for a shot against Tunisia in the preliminary round
of the FIBA World Championship in Istanbul, Turkey. He had 23 points
and 13 rebounds. |
Never mind the tense relationship between their governments,
which have been at odds for 31 years. What matters on the court at the FIBA
World Championship in Istanbul, Turkey, is basketball, and the teasing between
opposing players - called "trash talk" - is part of the game when friends play
one another.
"For the past few months, as this game has been materializing
and we got the matchups for the world cup, we were kind of jabbing at each other
back and forth," said Haddadi, a member of the professional National Basketball
Association (NBA) team the Memphis Grizzlies, where Gay is his teammate. "He
kept on bothering me with comments like 'I'm going to dunk on you, Hamed,' or
'I'm going to score a bunch of points on you,' and I went back to him and said,
'Watch out, because you're going to get blocked a couple of times in that
game.'"
Reached at his hotel in Istanbul on the eve of the September 1
Iran-U.S. match, Haddadi noted the "talk and hype surrounding this game." He
said it will be a chance for Iran to play its best, though not necessarily to
beat a U.S. team packed with NBA stars. Haddadi is the first Iranian to play in
the NBA.
"From a basketball standpoint, it's always good to play the
best basketball team in the world and, in my opinion, the U.S. ranks among that
hierarchy," he said.
|
Arsalan Kazemi going for
the basket with Hamed Haddadi watching. Haddadi plays professionally
in the United States, and Kazemi is a student-athlete at Rice
University in Texas. |
Trash talk is not a usual part of international basketball,
Haddadi said, because it requires that opposing players be friends, or at least
familiar with one another. That happens on American playgrounds and in the NBA,
but not often in international tournaments, where one player might face an
opponent only once in a career.
Although basketball, not politics, is on the players' minds,
Haddadi said national pride does have a role in international competition. In
facing the U.S. team, though, he said the Iranian players can be proud even if
they are defeated.
"We want to go out there and represent our country well," he
said. "We want to put on an honorable and respectable performance and not
embarrass ourselves. You have to remember, every player on that U.S. team, for
the most part, is a superstar on their own [professional] team, so this is a
collection of stars, the best of the best there is." His goal, and that of his
teammates: "I will give my best effort to represent myself as a player, but
also, more importantly, as a player for the country of Iran."
Haddadi lamented that the Iranian team's efforts get "very,
very limited exposure" in Iranian media, and he didn't think the U.S.-Iran game
was being televised in Iran, "so that takes away a little bit from it, that our
fans and our countrymen in Iran cannot watch this game."
"I get e-mails. I get messages on my Facebook fan page from
people who support us, thousands of people who want to see the game," Haddadi
said. "But I know that, for right now, the lack of media coverage definitely
contributes to the fact that [basketball is] just not as big as it should be in
Iran." As a result, he said, Iran's basketball program lacks the resources to
win at the top international levels.
Haddadi, 25, who stands 218 centimeters (7 feet, 2 inches)
tall, has spent two seasons in the NBA as a backup center for the Grizzlies, and
he said he has become comfortable with his adopted home. He even sponsored a
basketball camp for Iranian-American youngsters in Los Angeles last year, and he
plans to repeat the camp this fall in at least two cities.
"The assimilation process was very smooth for me," he said.
"I'm very comfortable with my teammates, the country, the U.S. I really love
living there and working there. The great friends I've made on the team, my
colleagues - Marc Gasol, Rudy Gay - those are guys that have become my friends
as much as they've become my teammates. I feel that I have really established
myself in the country."
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... Payvand News - 09/01/10 ... --
