Sam Dekker's London Calling

In this Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza (on a Wednesday), we share the tale of England's best-known basketball player ... and the wild career-stalling limbo keeping Dekker off the court at the moment

London Town is not where you go to find basketball stories.

Or so they say.

Obsessive focus on the beautiful game of proper football, fish and chips, delicious September temperatures, frequent trains to Manchester, craft coffee everywhere and what might be Planet Earth's last tangible appreciation for the printed word in newspapers that has gone extinct elsewhere in too many places to count ... all of that (and more) is what lured me to London for two recent visits.

An interesting hoops tale with NBA connections? Much harder to find those.

Yet I did find one. While making those swings through England's capital city in both August and September, I was apprised of former Houston Rockets first-round pick Sam Dekker's fascinating (and highly unusual) quandary as the star of the London Lions who isn't allowed to play for them.

Dekker has spent the past two seasons thriving with the Lions and, with assistance from fellow former NBAers Kosta Koufos and David Nwaba, trying to legitimize the franchise (and Great Britain itself) as a desirable outpost for high-level players. Then an offseason ownership change necessitated by a funding crisis — coupled with a dramatic financial restructuring throughout British basketball after the league that launched the coaching careers of Minnesota's Chris Finch and Philadelphia's Nick Nurse essentially collapsed — resulted in the installation of an incredibly strict salary cap.

So strict that the suddenly Lithuanian-owned Lions, while they have agreed to honor the two seasons still remaining on Dekker's contract, can't put him in uniform for games in what has been rebranded as Super League Basketball.

The Lions play host to the Bristol Flyers on Thursday night but Dekker — too expensive to register as an active player — can only attend as a spectator.

"It's tough that we're in the situation we're in now, because it was fun being an ambassador for the game I love and in this country that really embraced me being here and really propped me up as a player and a person," Dekker said. "I took great pride and great responsibility in it."

Now 30 and still hopeful for another NBA shot, Dekker practices with the Lions and works out on his own (see video above) to stay ready in hopes that a European club with a larger budget takes him on via soccer-style loan. His wife Olivia Harlan Dekker, meanwhile, is living out one of my professional dreams, having secured a full-time media role in London with British broadcasting giant Sky Sports as an NFL studio host and reporter — quite a feat for an American who does not rank as an ex-player.

For those first two seasons with the Lions, when they spent so much more than everyone else in the country and competed in the EuroCup with ambitions of becoming a EuroLeague team someday, Sam Dekker found it all pretty lovely, too. Especially given the widespread initial skepticism that greeted his decision to move to the lightly regarded British Basketball League after stints with five NBA teams (Rockets, Clippers, Cavaliers, Wizards and Raptors) as well as stops in Russia and Türkiye.

Year 1 went so well that it prompted Dekker to sign a three-year contract extension rarely seen in the European game.

"When I first got to London, it was like ... people around Europe laughed," Dekker said. "They were like: 'What? What a joke.'

"Man it's been so much fun. Just playing in a city like this ... London is the best of every big city, right? It's just so connected. It's so multicultural. It's just so cool to have such a great vibe that you know you can find anything for anyone in London. And we were really on the cusp of growing something really big. We went from having like 500 people in the Copper Box Arena to being sold out on random Sunday afternoons when there's Premier League football on.

"Kids in the UK love basketball because it's fast, it's flashy, it's exciting. And you could really feel that at our games — kids coming back and wanting to play and the game growing. It just became our basketball home and I couldn't imagine playing anywhere else in Europe while I was playing here in London."

The search for alternatives now, though, has been forced upon Dekker, while his wife — daughter of longtime NBA play-by-play ace Kevin Harlan — continues to expand her TV career on British soil. They also have a young son, Wolf, as they face the prospect of Dad being abruptly summoned to a new country to resume playing while Mom stays put to cover the rest of the NFL season for Sky.

In June, Dekker auditioned for Philadelphia, Golden State and his home-state Milwaukee Bucks in a bid to make an NBA comeback. The workouts didn't lead to an NBA offer then, but the 6-foot-9 swingman is convinced that he is a more well-rounded player after two seasons with the Lions than when he was last seen with the Toronto Raptors in October 2021.

Fellow University of Wisconsin alumnus Brett Burman, who left a scouting role with the Memphis Grizzlies for London to try his hand at GM-ing, sold Dekker on the idea that playing for the Lions would take his game to a new level offensively under coach Ryan Schmidt. (Schmidt joined the Atlanta Hawks' coaching staff this offseason and is working closely now with June's No. 1 overall draft pick Zaccharie Risacher.)

"It turned out being the best move we could have made," Dekker said. "I completely reinvented my game here. It almost felt like I was in high school again, just being on the ball and playmaking and having fun out there."

In 201 NBA games, Dekker shot just 28.8% from 3-point range — nowhere near acceptable to keep a job in #thisleague. Job No. 1 at this stage, which he clearly understands, is to "prove to NBA teams how well I can shoot the ball now."

"That was always the thing," Dekker said. "It was always like, 'Sam's super streaky — you know he's an athlete and he can get downhill but he's streaky with his shot.' The way the NBA has gone you have to be able to show you can shoot and that's probably the best part of my game now."

There have been some flashes to back that up. In 2020-21 with Türk Telekom in Türkiye, Dekker shot 45.2% from deep to earn his short-lived stay with Toronto in 2021-22. He also shot 40% from 3-point range in seven EuroCup games last season for the Lions ... but only after shooting 27.6% from deep in 15 EuroCup games in 2022-23.

The workout in Philadelphia's gym reunited him with the GM who drafted him in Houston (Daryl Morey) and his former Raptors coach (Nurse), but Dekker says signing with the Sixers was likely "the longest shot" of his three bids for an NBA return. Shooting well in those settings, of course, is the only acceptable outcome.

"It's one of those things that, mentally, it kind of can mess you up a little bit because you put so much pressure on yourself and stress on yourself to be perfect at these workouts," Dekker said. "And then when you actually play at that level, you're like, "OK, I was really, really good,' then you get your hopes up.

"And then for things to not happen ... it's just so hard to get back into the league. But that's just how it goes. You just really, really have to be present in the situation you're currently in and not get too caught up in, 'I gotta be back in the NBA, I gotta be back home.' It's really hard to get back into a team's plans when you're thousands of miles away and there's so many good players in the world that are also deserving of these opportunities, but you have to remind yourself: It's just a matter of one team liking you."

As an incurable Anglophile, I couldn't resist asking if the wait for that one team to call, as agonizing as it can be, is at least cushioned by where he's waiting.

“We love it here," Dekker said. "I’ve felt like an ambassador for this league and this country.

"Going overseas and playing in five different countries and being told 'no' a lot ... it does take a lot out of you. But we're ready for whatever's thrown at us and we're going to have a lot of memories and a lot of fun stories to talk about whenever it's done. And I think I got a lot left in the tank."