King Kaufman's Sports Daily

In "Paddy on the Hardwood," former Division I assistant coach Rus Bradburd writes about going to Ireland to play music and escape hoops. It didn't work.

Read more: Sports, Books, Music, Basketball, Ireland, Books Interviews, College Basketball, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

March 6, 2007 | Rus Bradburd, a former Division III reserve point guard from Chicago, was a Division I assistant basketball coach for 14 years, most of those under coaching legends Don Haskins at Texas-El Paso and Lou Henson at New Mexico State. But he gave it all up to move to Ireland and play his fiddle.

"I ran out of gas," Bradburd, 47, writes in "Paddy on the Hardwood: A Journey in Irish Hoops," an enjoyable memoir of the two years he spent in the small town of Tralee, County Kerry, working on a book of short stories and trying to master Irish fiddling. Oh, and coaching the Tralee Tigers, a team in the Irish Superleague, the lowest rung on the ladder of European professional basketball.

He figured the Tigers would be an easy side job, a way to sustain himself without getting too emotionally involved while he pursued what he calls his "two new romances: literature and music." It didn't work out that way.

The Tigers, known as the Frosties Tigers after their sponsor, what Americans know as Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, were hit by a wave of injuries and defections and finished last in the Irish Superleague, a circuit that plays no better than a distant fourth fiddle to Ireland's two most popular sports, Gaelic football and hurling, plus soccer.

Irish basketball is a land of dim lights, filthy locker rooms, tile floors and battling the local badminton club for gym time. Only the imported American players, limited to two per team, get paid, and they don't get paid much. As the Tigers foundered in 2002-03, Bradburd writes that he found himself obsessing over the game as much as he had in his big-time college coaching days.

Despite having married after that first year, he decided to return for a second, this time leading the team, now called the Horan's Health Store Tigers because of a new sponsor, to the league title. At that, he took his leave, though he still signs e-mails with "Go Tralee Tigers!" They're the Abrakebabra Tigers now. "It's a 24-hour kebab stand," he says.

I spoke to Bradburd Monday by phone from his office at New Mexico State, where he teaches English.

How does fiddling relate to basketball -- or how doesn't it?

Before I wrote "Paddy on the Hardwood" I would have had no idea, but what I learned over in Ireland was that the similarities are that in basketball, you go and practice your shot or your dribbling or your moves by yourself, and then you go back to the larger group and you find out how good, or in my case how bad, you are.

Well, I had the same experience with fiddling. I would sit at home in my apartment in Tralee trying to work out problems and work out tunes, and I'd go with the group and realize, OK, I'm playing with this group, I've got to be able to do what that guy there can do.

More than anything, what that did for me was remind me of what my players were going through as I was trying to force my system and an American mentality on them, and wondering, "Why don't they get it?" Well, by having to go through the same process myself sort of in reverse, learning an Irish tradition as a naive American, I think it gave me patience, and also helped me sort of understand the Irish mentality.

Next page: "I sort of stumbled on the Michael Jordan of Ireland"