Chones in Hungary
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Hungary also has a very strong women's basketball league, as Kaayla Chones of the Washington Mystics is learning. Chones is playing this winter season for BSE-ESMA Budapest, one of 11 teams in the top Hungarian women's league.
"I think it is little more physical than playing in the States," Chones said in a telephone interview Nov. 28 from her Budapest apartment. "I knew it was competitive and physical. I came prepared for that. I knew I had to be more aggressive."
"I am a post player. I am a center. My game has always been aggressive," she added. "It gives me a chance to be a leader on the team."
Chones, in her second season with the Mystics, appeared in 12 games in 2005 and averaged just 5.1 mpg, 1.2 ppg and 0.5 rpg.
She notes that she played behind several experienced and talented centers this past summer in Washington. Chones estimated that she is playing about 30 minutes per game in Hungary.
"I am ... dusting off my skills and getting ready for training camp," said the 6-foot-3 center, who turns 25 in January. "I am just trying to focus on being aggressive. I am such a young player."
Unlike the NCAA or WNBA, European leagues play 10-minute quarters. In international play, the three-second lane is a trapezoid, not a rectangle, wider at the basket end. Walking is called more quickly than in the NCAA and WNBA when a player does not clearly put the ball on the floor before she picks up her pivot foot.
Chones also has to adjust to a Hungarian coach, Sandor Farkas, who does not speak English. She said some of her Hungarian teammates who speak English translate some of his advice during a game. "If they remember," she added. "Basketball is basketball, world-wide. I have been here two months and it is getting easier."
Her team normally practices from 9:30 to 11 a.m. and again from 5:30 to 7 p.m.. It is normal for European teams, both men's and women's, to practice twice a day during the week.
Chones has had several big games recently. She had 21 points and seven rebounds on Nov. 27 in a 75-67 loss to Zala Volan; she had 24 points and five rebounds Nov. 25 in a 116-51 win over BEAC; and she had 31 points and eight rebounds Nov. 13 in a 75-55 win over Raba.
Her team also plays in the tough Euroleague (against teams from outside Hungary), and in her first six games there she averaged 15.3 ppg, 6.3 rpg and 29 mpg. She made 40 of 65 shots from the field (61.5 percent), 12 of 21 from the line (57.1) and had seven assists, 13 steals and 13 turnovers.
Hungary was under Communist control until the early 1990s. The country is about the size of Indiana, and nearly 20 percent of the population lives in Budapest. There are very few other cities with a population more than 200,000 people.
Chones has been to Germany, Slovakia and Croatia with her team for Euroleague games. On Thanksgiving Day, which is not celebrated in Hungary, her team played a game in Zagreb, Croatia.
Chones first came to Europe when she was 15, on a basketball trip to Belgium as part of a sports exchange program in her home state of Ohio. Chones plans to head home to States for the holidays on Dec. 22, then return to Hungary on Jan. 3 with an eye on preparing for Mystics' training game that begins in April.
Editor's note: David Driver is a free-lance writer from Cheverly, Md., and has covered sports in the Washington area for 15 years. Since 2003 he has lived with his family in Szeged, Hungary during the academic year, and written extensively about American basketball players in Europe for several publications.