When Albert Jackson first pitched his friend Demario Mayfield on playing professional basketball with him in Iraq, he mentioned the money, not the explosion.
It was the summer of 2015, and Jackson had just finished his first season with the Oil Club in Baghdad. When the team asked him for help finding another American player to pad the roster, Jackson thought of Mayfield immediately. The pair had been teammates for a season at Georgia, and Jackson knew Mayfield had recently gone undrafted and was eager to prove himself as a professional.
Apart from the time he felt the floor of his hotel shake and heard the gunshots following a terrorist attack in the restaurant beneath his room, Jackson had enjoyed his season in Iraq.