When it comes to basketball hotbeds, the types of places where one finds elite hoop talents practicing their craft, Aalst, Belgium isn't a name that leaps to mind. Neither the country's 15th-largest city nor its 2,800-seat arena are locations where one expects to find a future NBA player, let alone two.
But that is exactly what veteran Chris Young had on his Okapi Aalstar team headed into the 2011-12 season, the 10th of his 12 years in Europe after playing collegiately at the University of Michigan. Young, who had already established himself as the premier center in Belgium's top division, knew that he had extraordinary teammates.