Teaching Their Children Well

"I knew that it would be hard here," Klimov, now 16, said in an interview at the CSKA training facility. "Maybe sometimes I miss my family. I think it's quite normal."

The Teenage Professionals

After an hour of weight training and a two-hour practice last month, the members of CSKA's junior program, none older than 19, tossed on stocking caps and hefty, team-issued, navy blue bubble coats. They prepared to trudge 10 minutes, through a light snowfall, from team headquarters to their dormitory on the opposite side of Leningradsky Prospect, the crammed thoroughfare that links Moscow to St. Petersburg, 400 miles away.

Coping with the brisk temperatures and fumes from the bumper-to-bumper traffic, they walked through an armed CSKA security gate and past a shopping center parking lot. Ignoring the sex shops that line the next block, they climbed a pedestrian bridge and headed down to the dormitory. Lunch and afternoon naps beckoned before they had to return practice again in six hours.

"I eat, sleep and train," CSKA point guard Alexey Shved, 18, said through an interpreter. "I have very little free time. I'm not like the other youth, smoking, drinking. I prefer training. It's better for me to be here."

CSKA -- an acronym for Central Sports Army Club, the name it carried when affiliated with the Soviet army -- signs players beginning at age 14 to contracts that usually last about five years. CSKA supplies them with room, board and a salary ranging from $300 to $2,000 a month, depending on their progress and play (the average Russian salary is $410 a month).

Seventeen players on the junior team, who are between 15 and 19, live in seven rooms in the dormitory, a terra-cotta-colored building with two square beige columns outside the front door. The CSKA soccer players are on the third and highest floor, with the basketball players below them. The CSKA boxers, ice skaters and hockey players are elsewhere in the dorm. Shved and Artur Urazmanov, a participant in the Nike Hoop Summit against top U.S. prep stars in Memphis in April, live in a furnished apartment a few blocks away, provided by the club.

After plowing through large portions of chicken soup and meatballs with pasta in the dining hall, Klimov took a nap, but teammates Semen (pronounced SEH-men) Shashkov and Maxim Zakharov postponed sleep to watch highlights of NBA players LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Vince Carter on a DVD in the tidy room they share.

A few teammates slipped in and grabbed spots on the twin beds or adjacent couch to watch. The players, some in T-shirts from CSKA sponsor Nike, were silent, studying the movements of each player intensely. Above the television and between two windows that look down on the street was a small poster of Kobe Bryant in a Los Angeles Lakers uniform, dunking.

"If you look at the basketball aspect, it's great. The players that I've practiced with, I've seen them get better," said CSKA senior team guard and former Duke standout Trajan Langdon, who is in his fifth season playing in Europe and has observed the club systems in Italy and Turkey, as well. "One of the negatives of this experience is that this is all that they do."

The day for most players begins with breakfast and weight training as part of an individual strength program. Donning their red CSKA practice jerseys last month, the players worked more on state-of-the-art weight machines than with the free weights arrayed against one wall. They also did resistance training with large rubber bands as a strength coach looked on.

Players who haven't finished secondary school attend classes three times a week, while every member of the team practices mornings and evenings, a total of 10 times a week, in a gym one floor above the senior team's practice court.

"No doubt, [my life] has changed," Klimov said. "Now, I go to work. Every day, I must get up and train. No matter if I am sick, I am tired, I don't want to. I must go. I've come here for basketball."