Life in Spain: Kassius Robertson

Originally established in 1983 as the ACB Primera Divison, the league was renamed in 2011 as the Liga ACB after a change in management. Today, the Liga ACB consists of 18 teams and follows the usual double round-robin format where each club plays every other club twice (once at home and once away) for a total of 34 games. Currently, Robertson plays for the Santiago Monbus Obradoiros which is in a city five hours away from the Spanish capital of Madrid. 

With the Monbus Obradoiros currently holding a 5-4 record, we caught up with Robertson to see how he’s been doing since joining his teammates and how he’s adapted to life in Santiago. 

Robertson’s journey to Santiago, Spain was delayed by a month because of COVID-19 preventing him from receiving his [mailed] visa by the start of the 2020-21 Liga Endesa pre-season. Finally, on September 13th, Kassius left Canadian soil and began his two-day trek to the Spanish northwest capital of Santiago de Compostela.

“I flew from Toronto to Frankfurt, which was about seven and a half hours; and then I flew from Frankfurt, to Madrid; and then from Madrid to Santiago,” said Robertson. While anxious to get back on the court after an already late start to his season, Robertson had to wait nearly another week while he underwent and waited for the results of two COVID-19 tests, as two negatives are required by the team in order to be cleared to play. 

With this being Robertson’s first season with the Monbus Obradoiro, he has had a lot to learn and quickly. “My first practice was 10 days before the first [official season] game because of all the drama with my visa, so, I was thrown into the fire immediately,” said Robertson. “The rest of the team had been there for [I think] five weeks before me so they had lots of pre-season training and practice and time to learn all the plays. My coach has a ton of plays that you need to remember, and he doesn’t have the patience to walk you through it three or four times. He’ll teach it to you once and you better get it or you’re not going to play. So, for me it’s been really tough.”

Like many athletes are experiencing, getting back onto the court after various COVID-19 restrictions has been an adjustment. “When I first arrived, I wasn’t playing that good because I had just quarantined for five days straight and had to get back into shape a little bit; my muscles and joints were on fire for the first couple weeks,” said Robertson. 

Aside from struggling to quickly learn his coach’s playbook and getting back into shape, Kassius recognized that he fortunately has not experienced any language barriers or difficulties communicating with his teammates and team staff. “My entire team and all my coaches speak great English,” commented Robertson. “In the basketball culture in almost every country now, coaches know that if they want overseas talent, like English speaking players, they’ll have to know and speak English in their career, so they’re usually pretty good at it.”

To get up to par with the other players on his team, Robertson has been in the gym even when his team isn’t scheduled to train or workout in order to get up as many shots as possible. However, he recognizes that he must listen to his body when it needs a break because he’s ultimately the one that’s responsible for taking care of his physical and mental health while overseas.“It's a lot different than the NBA in terms of physiotherapy and access to doctors. Our team sometimes has a physiotherapist for massages, but in terms of stretching and icing [your body], it’s all on you,” said Robertson. “For me, I try to at least get a massage every day from our physiotherapist and I have my own rolling balls, foam roller; and Theragun that I use at home almost every day.”

Since the official season began on September 20, the Liga ACB implemented COVID-19 protocols to protect their players and to prevent another season from being cut-short. 

“Basically, we’re allowed to do whatever we want, but we know if we happen to test positive, we’ll be out for 10 days and miss a game or two. Our league tests us twice a week, once before we play a game, and then the day after we play a game,” said Robertson. “My team has not had any positive tests yet, but a couple of the teams in the league have. How it works is that if one person tests positive [on the team], the whole team gets retested, and if those results come back with two or less players testing positive, the rest of the team can still play.” Ultimately. the league will postpone a game if more than two players on the same team test positive, which is what recently happened when the opposing team had five players test positive prior to the game scheduled on November 7th. 

As Robertson has entered his third season in an overseas league, he’s noted that he’s changed a lot since his first year in terms of taking care of his mental health and enjoying his time off the court. 

“In my opinion, mental health is the number one thing that makes or breaks a lot of overseas player’s careers because you’re by yourself a lot and don’t have anybody [here],” said Robertson. “The biggest thing I’ve learned to do is completely immerse myself into whatever culture I’m in because it helps me make the most out of my time away from home.” Robertson went on to share the struggles he faced during his first year in Germany. “The language barrier was super tough for me and I was in total culture shock. I dismissed everything; I didn’t try any German food or even go out with my German teammates; I was only concerned with playing basketball and counting the days until I got to go home. Looking back, I’ve noticed that year was so tough for me because I thought like that.” 

However, Robertson quickly realized that he needed to shift his attitude if he wanted to improve his overall quality of life and that being ignorant, or not interested in any other cultures besides his own, would result in him having a terrible time both on and off the court. 

“If you feel like you’re having a bad time, it’ll feel like you’re there forever. You have to try to learn and enjoy your time as much as you can because you’re not going to get it back and [because] it’s a lot of people’s dream to travel the world,” said Robertson. “If you immerse yourself in the culture, like try to learn as much Spanish as you can, or go sight-seeing, your whole experience will be better, including your performance on the court. You got to try your best to learn everything you can because once you dive into a culture, it’s really awesome.”

Since arriving in Santiago, Kassius has spent some of his off time travelling about the city to learn about its culture and history. He noted that a favorite place of his that he’s visited [so far] is the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which is one of the most famous cathedrals in all of Europe. 

With already a few games this season being cancelled or postponed, Robertson will not be travelling home for Christmas this year because of his league’s tight scheduling and rescheduling of games. “Last year we played on Christmas and I don’t know what our schedule is like this year, but we’ll have a game for sure,” said Robertson. “With the games we’ve already missed, I’m pretty sure the league wants us to be caught up before the new year; so there’s no time to visit home really.”

For Robertson, he’s using this season to further his career end goal of playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). “Spain is probably the third best league in the world outside of NBA and I’m just taking it one step at a time. I think dominating this league is my current goal and then once I do that, I think I’ll have a better chance at being drafted [in the NBA],” said Robertson. “Compared to previous overseas seasons, I am in a much better head space now and I do know where I need to put in more work to set myself apart from other players.”  

Between overcoming the initial struggles when first joining Monbus Obradoiros, and Robertson’s shift in mindset to focus on his mental health and soak in his overseas experience, it seems that he has found the recipe for success as he is dominating in the Liga ACB, averaging 16.1 points, 3.1 assists and 44.3% in three point percentage, just 9 games in. He was most recently named Canada Basketball’s Player of the Week. 

To follow along with Kassius’s season, the Monbus Obradoiro’s live score (and video online live stream), schedule, and results, can be found here.