By MIKE GROSS, Sports Columnist
mgross@lnpnews.com
Jerry Johnson has become an unofficial citizen of the world during a decade of playing pro basketball in places like Turkey, Lithuania, Poland, France and Cyprus.
He's about to become an official citizen of …
Kazakhstan?
Kazakhstan.
Johnson, 31, played high school basketball at McCaskey and college ball at Rider, which will induct him into its athletic hall of fame next month.
He just completed his second season with the B.C. Astana Tigers, who have won seven of the last nine titles in the country's pro league, the Kazakh National League.
Johnson averaged 11.2 points and 4.4 assists in 28 minutes per game.
Astana is the country's capital city. B.C. Astana is the league's only team that also competes internationally.
The team's coach, Matteo Boniciolli, also coaches the national team. Johnson is persuing dual citizenship so that he can compete with the national team in the World Basketball Championship next year and down the road, perhaps, in the 2016 Olympics.
"The (national) team is developing, and they want to do more," Johnson said during a noisy phone call from Astana on Tuesday.
"They asked me if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said, 'Why not?' "
There was laughter — not at Johnson, presumably — and a loud voice in the background.
"That's my driver," Johnson said.
Yes, he has a driver, and a nice place to live and an international school for his kids to attend.
Kazakhstan is north of Afghanistan, south of Russia, west of China and about as far from the NBA as you can get without venturing to outer space, but it's a relatively oil-rich country, and Astana is a big (population: 775,000), modern city.
If you can ball, and Johnson can, and you're willing to globe-trot, and Johnson is, you can live nicely in some far-flung outposts.
"It's not really that unusual," Johnson said of his dual-citizenship plans.
There are some well-known examples.
Serge Ibaka, the Oklahoma City Thunder's fine power forward, was born in the Congo, moved to Spain as a teenager, became a Spanish citizen in 2011, and helped Spain to an Olympic silver medal in 2012.
Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls fled his native Sudan with his family during a Civil War and lived in Egypt and Great Britain before playing high school and college (Duke) basketball in the U.S.
He became a British citizen in 2006, and has played for the British national team.
You do have to be willing and able to globe-trot, though. Johnson returned to Lancaster Wednesday, and will be here for about a month.
Then he'll head to Italy (recall the coaches' name, Matteo Boniciolli) for training camp, and some games with the Italian U20 national team.
The team will return to Kazakhstan briefly, and schedule games here and there with Lithuanian and other pro opponents.
They'll head to China in July, and prepare to compete in the FIBA Asian Championships, scheduled for Aug. 1-11 in Manila, Philippines.
(The original host city was Beirut, Lebanon, but what with the Syrian Civil War, general unrest in the Middle East and all …)
The top three finishers in that event earn berths in next year's World Championships, commonly known as the FIBA World Cup, in August and September in Madrid, Spain.
The World Cup in contested every four years. The United States beat host Turkey in the 2010 gold-medal game.
Since the tournament opened to professionals in 1994, MVP awards have been won by Shaquille O'Neal, Dirk Nowitski, Pau Gasol, Kevin Durant and, during the NBA lockout in 1998, some dude from Yugoslavia.
Yes, Johnson probably, eventually, will return to Lancaster and stay a while. He has a foundation, through which he'd like to run camps and AAU teams. There has even been talk of his coaching, or helping to coach, at McCaskey someday.
"Not yet, though," he said. "I'm not done playing."
Or wearing out his passport.
