Backpacking Through the U.S. With the Wizards

↵Oleksiy Pecherov isn’t much different from the cliché American college grads who spend a month or three backpacking through Europe. Of course, instead of sleeping in Parisian hostels and scarfing down gelato in Rome, the Wizards youngster is staying in the Oklahoma City Hilton and eating at The Cheesecake Factory. Otherwise, as Pecherov tells his friends in the Wizards locker room, he’s doing the same thing.↵↵⇥Pecherov -- who has played in only four games this season and despite working hard in practices remains behind in picking up the team’s defensive schemes -- joked with [Antawn] Jamison: “You know, I a tourist. I a tourist,” he said in his Ukranian accent. Jamison asked what he meant and Pesh said. “You know, I travel, I stay in nice hotels, I eat nice food, I cheer for each and every one of you. I don’t play. I a tourist.”↵↵Also, Pecherov gets paid $1 million a year to be a tourist. The NBA road life must be so odd for the fraternity of never-used scrubs, especially the young Ukrainian fellas. Luckily for Leksi, he has a Lithuanian teammate, Darius Songaila. I’m not sure Pecherov and Songaila are friends, but as products of U.S.S.R. secessionist states it seems they could find some conversation topics. (“He said ‘Putin.’ Ha ha!”) If nothing else, Jamison’s conversations with Pech must be more coherent than those with Martian JaVale McGee.
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↵H/T: Bullets Forever↵