Best of SI: Revisiting SI's 'Young, Gifted, and Homeless' Cover Story

He was 6,000 miles from his family and friends in Baltimore, and incalculably further culturally. He didn’t speak the language. He was cold, even when the wind didn’t whip. His girlfriend was in Iceland, multiple time zones and flights away.

But Isaiah Lamb didn’t want to leave Armenia. In the several months since he’d arrived in the unlikeliest place to play pro basketball, he’d grown to like the country and revel in its charms, in his own fish-out-of-water story. This wasn’t the NBA, but he was thrilled to be playing in a league where coaches didn’t adhere to a rigid system, where they let their players ball. At 6' 4", Lamb could get his shot off against any defender in the league. He wasn’t making millions, but he was making out O.K. His team, Aragats, in the Armenia Basketball League A, provided him with an apartment; food was cheap; and his paycheck more than covered his expenses. He was traveling to places he’d never dreamed he would set foot—Russia, Belarus, Georgia. “All and all,” he says, “yeah, I was happy. More happy than homesick, that’s for sure.”

But then came the coronavirus. Even in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, not far from the Turkish border, the virus did its equivalent of a Eurostep. And so in March, Lamb, grudgingly, made plans to head back to the U.S. It was a long flight, almost 24 hours, and after that inconvenience he would suddenly be unemployed.

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