Troy Simons spent much of the last year living in Tubingen, a city with a population of about 90,000 located in southern Germany.
People often ask the Hill District native what it’s like being so far away from home.
For Simons, that’s an easy answer.
“I’ve been far away from home since I got out of high school. I’m used to it,” Simons said.
But even for the well-traveled Simons, Germany is a long way away. Playing for the Tubingen Tigers during the 2020-21 season marked the professional basketball debut for Simons, who at 25 years old continues to see his career take him to places he never even fathomed.
Traveling is usually frowned upon in basketball, but Simons’ high school, college and now pro career has been filled with more of it than you can imagine. This is a guy who attended four different high schools in five years and played at three different colleges. He also committed and then decommitted to two others, one of them being Pitt.
“It’s all been worth it,” said Simons. “I made every stop for a reason. There was something for me to learn at each stop.”
This summer, Simons has been playing in the D.R.E.A.M. Pro-Am League in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood. The games, held Monday-Thursday evenings at A Giving Heart Community Center, feature many current and former college standouts, some of whom, like Simons, play professionally overseas.
“Good runs,” Simons said of what he’s getting out of the league. “There are a lot of pro athletes in there that push me to my limits and I can get better with. It’s getting me back in shape for the time that I’ve been off.”
Simons had his first pro season end in March and returned home in April. It was a one-year contract, and Simons said he has not yet decided where he will play the upcoming season.
It has already been an unlikely journey for Simons, who for a long time had dreams of playing pro football and has been on the move since ninth grade. He attended his freshman year at University Prep, sophomore year at Brashear, junior year at Imani Christian, and then began his senior year at Renaissance Christian. But Renaissance closed in the fall of his senior year and he was unable to graduate. Instead, he repeated the grade at University Prep, but was ineligible to play sports. He graduated from University Prep in 2015 after not having played basketball his final two years of high school.
Five years later, Simons found himself playing professional basketball on the other side of the world.
“That’s wild because I never expected to be a professional basketball player,” he said. “Growing up, I didn’t really care about playing basketball. I was a football player at the time. But I had to switch sports because I had lost all my football scholarships when I didn’t graduate on time. Thinking about me playing in Germany is just wild because I never thought I’d be out of the country playing ball.”
Simons was all over the United States playing ball, though. His first stop was at Polk State College in Florida, where he played for Rankin native Matt Furjanic. Simons spent two seasons at Polk State, and led all junior college players nationally in scoring his sophomore season when he averaged 26 points per game. That came after he backed out of a commitment to Middle Tennessee State after his freshman season. Then, after his sophomore season, he committed to Pitt in March 2017.
“At the time I really wanted to play for Pitt, play for my hometown,” he said. “They started recruiting me and they ended up offering me, so I decommitted from Middle Tennessee and committed to Pitt. Once I committed, though, the communication between me and Pitt fell off. They stopped contacting me and I didn’t really like it, so I ended up decommitting from Pitt and ended up getting the offer from NM.”
That would be New Mexico, where Simons played during the 2017-18 season and he averaged 9.9 points a game.
Simons, though, wanted to play closer to home, so he decided to play his senior season at Kent State, which he did after sitting out a season due to NCAA transfer rules. Simons started for the Golden Flashes and averaged 12.5 points per game during the 2019-20 campaign. He graduated from Kent State last spring with a degree in educational studies.
Starting a pro basketball career on the other side of the globe during a once-in-a-century pandemic wasn’t ideal, but Simons did just that last August. He originally planned to play in Poland, but didn’t get his passport in time.
“My agent found a team in Germany that was looking for a defensive player and a 3-point specialist, and they said I fit the description,” he said.
It was a successful debut season for Simons, who averaged 11.3 points per game. Tubingen competes in Germany’s Pro A league, which is one level below the Bundesliga.
“Just the environment was totally different from the states,” Simons said. “It’s cleaner. There’s no violence. You don’t hear the police sirens. It was a good experience.”
Brad Everett: beverett@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @BREAL412.
First Published: July 15, 2021, 10:15 a.m.
