Ex-Hawkeye Brunner has had buona pro career

Whatever their differences in language and lifestyle, Iowans and Italians share an appreciation of Greg Brunner.

While Brunner's pro basketball career looks like it will continue at least a little longer, his 6-year stint in Italy apparently is coming to an end. It sounds like the fans there felt the same way about him as Hawkeyes fans did when the 6-foot-7 power forward from Charles City was helping Iowa to NCAA tournament berths in 2005 and 2006.

'The style of basketball I played was very appreciated there,” Brunner said last week from his Des Moines home. 'They love guys who are warriors. Their nickname for me means 'gladiator” in Italian. I play with emotion, and that's really what they want. They took to me because of that.”

But Brunner has also played to win, as he always showed in collecting 1,516 and points and 990 rebounds in his 127-game Iowa career.

That kind of performance translated in Italian, too. All of the five teams he played with in that nation went to their league's playoffs each season, and enabled him to be marketable each off-season.

In the season that recently ended, Brunner had a personal first. That was playing a second-straight year with the same team. He played with two teams in Belgium over two years before going to Italy.

Now, however, Brunner's Reggio Emilia team told him he would have a reduced role next season if he returned, so he is a free agent. A friend in Switzerland asked him to play for the Swiss national team in an August competition. Brunner's family has Swiss roots, and he has a Swiss passport.

After that, his playing career will end if he doesn't get a satisfactory contract offer. He has a wife and a 2-year-old son, who was born in Italy.

'We've been away from home for 10 months out of the year,” Brunner said. 'For the last two years, I think we were out of the country 348 out of the 365 days. It just got overwhelming.”

If his basketball days to extend over another year or two, Brunner said he'd be very happy. And if not?

'I'm networking around Des Moines.”

This past season was physically taxing, with Brunner injuring tendons on fingers of both hands, then suffering a third-degree calf tear that required seven hours of physical therapy a day.

'I love the purity of basketball, but the day-to-day stuff is getting to me, working six or seven days a week, the weird hours. I want to be able to pick my kids up in 10 years and not have continuous pain.

'I'm not biting the hand that's fed my family the last eight years. But I've dedicated my life to basketball since I was a 10-year-old. For 21 years I've been in hot, sweaty gyms. I'm ready to maybe start looking at something else.”

There has been an upside to Brunner's lifestyle these last eight years. Oh yes, there has been an upside.

'I've just been really happy over there, really successful,” he said. 'It gets tough because the seasons go long, but to live in Italy with great food, great wine, and to play some great basketball?

'I've seen Moscow, Berlin, Rome, Sydney, Prague, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam, anywhere you can imagine. If you'd told this small-town Iowa guy that he could see the world and never pay for anything, I'd have laughed at you.”

But it's gone beyond that. Blending into different communities in two other countries has been a lot different than being a big man on campus in Iowa City.

'I've become a better person because of it,” said Brunner. 'I used to be narrow-minded. I thought I was the center of the world. That's not how my mom and dad raised me.

'Playing where I have has brought humility to me and I really appreciate that.”

Brunner tried but couldn't latch on in the NBA after college. So what did he become? A professional basketball success story. Is anyone who watched him play at Iowa a bit surprised?