War isn’t something you should laugh about, but Maurice Creek can’t help but chuckle when he’s told he’ll be the life of every party he attends from here on out.
After spending a harrowing handful of days watching an invasion he was told wouldn’t happen break out in front of him, as he shuffled between an apartment and a bomb shelter, wondering if he’d ever make it home and why he was left stranded, Creek knows he’s incredibly lucky. He just can’t believe he has all these stories, because he honestly didn’t think he was going to live to tell them.
“I play Call of Duty a lot. For me to be playing that game and watch movies about war sometimes, and now I’m actually in it, I thought I was going to fucking die,” says Creek.
The 31-year-old professional basketball player—who stands at 6’5” and played his collegiate ball at Indiana and George Washington before taking his talents overseas—wasn’t supposed to be in Ukraine when Russia suddenly invaded the country in an unprovoked attack, kicking off Europe’s most aggressive military campaign since World War II. Six days later—after enduring a bunch of sleepless nights and a creeping sense of dread—Creek was safe and sound, humbled and thankful he got out.
But getting to the point where the worst-case scenarios stopped running through his head was an agony he never imagined he’d experience. Roughly 24 hours before he was scheduled to be reunited with his family in Maryland, Creek tells Complex Sports, via Zoom, that he’s relieved to be in Romania, relaying how scary it was to watch a war ignite.
You may have seen headlines about an American-born basketball player stranded in southern Ukraine or social media posts highlighting Creek’s ordeal. If you missed it, Creek’s plight was first covered shortly after the invasion by WJLA in Washington, DC. The TV station connected with Creek, who was stranded in Mykolaiv, population 476,000. The southern Ukrainian city on the Black Sea was being bombarded by Russian shells, and an exasperated Creek was desperately trying to get out of a situation he wanted no part of and was repeatedly told wouldn’t even happen.
“I was definitely scared for my life,” says Creek. “There’s no way else to say it. I was talking to people every day like, ‘How can I get out? How can I get out? How can I get out?’”
If all had gone according to plan, Creek wasn’t going to be in Ukraine when the bombs started dropping. Reading the writing on the wall as rumblings of war grew louder each day of February, Creek says he was looking to end his contract with MBC Mykolaiv in the Ukrainian SuperLeague. Essentially, he wanted to negotiate a buyout. But Creek says the team—mirroring the experience of other foreign players across Ukraine—didn’t want to let him go. One of the worst squads in Ukraine, the front office thought Creek could help the team make the playoffs after Creek contributed to a few Mykolaiv wins upon arriving in December. They never thought a war would break out.
Despite an increasingly tense situation, and international warnings that an invasion was imminent, Creek says the team assured its players—including five foreigners—they would be safe and that the games would go on. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president responsible for the invasion, was just bluffing, the players were told.
“Me and my teammates had multiple meetings about this type of situation, and they were really downplaying the situation as if something was not going to happen,” says Creek. “And the worst situation came about.”
While Creek says the other foreigners on Mykolaiv, including four Americans, managed to leave Ukraine without much drama—several had contracts with other European squads—the team held him back. In the days leading up to the onset of the war, Mykolaiv refused to issue Creek a letter of clearance so he could pursue other basketball opportunities in a safer place and continue to make money for his daughter back in the US. The team, Creek alleges, also refused to pay him the full portion of the money he earned up until Feb. 21.
In the days before the bombings commenced, Creek tried to remain calm and rely on his Ukrainian agent to finesse the details of his exit, but he says the team dragged its feet. They didn’t want to lose him. Nor did they seriously think—unfortunately, like many Ukrainians—that war was about to break out. Even if the worst-case scenario happened, Creek says he was told the team could relocate to a safer part of the country.
“That held up the process of me getting out, because I didn’t have the resources to get out,” says Creek. “They were looking at the business side of things instead of my life being on the line. That’s what I was taking it as. Y’all are holding me here to play basketball because y’all think nothing’s going to happen. And instead of being better safe than sorry, y’all want to be more sorry than safe. I didn’t like that.”
When the war arrived Feb. 24, shortly after Putin gave a rambling, illogical speech justifying it, dread set in. A lack of funds, stemming from not being paid his full wage from the team, was one of the biggest reasons Creek couldn’t exit the country. His family started a GoFundMe campaign last weekend to raise money, while others made phone calls. Creek gives special praise to Charlie Parker, coach of Sideline Cancer, a team Creek played for in 2020 in The Basketball Tournament. Creek connected with Erik Nordberg, a retired Lt. Colonel in the US Army, at a basketball clinic put on by Sideline Cancer a few years back and the two stayed in touch. Thanks to his 23 years in the service and experience evacuating Americans after leaving the service, Nordberg was the right guy to know. When Nordberg heard Creek was stuck, he investigated options for an exit. Creek thought he was on his way out of the country last weekend before a plan fell apart, tweeting his bitter disappointment.
Finally, one of the Mykolaiv assistant coaches told Creek to join his wife and sister in a cab that would drive them out of the city and to the Moldova border Monday. During the two-plus-hour trip that wound around the southern portion of Ukraine along the Black Sea, and included multiple checkpoints, Creek kept hoping for the best while bracing for the worst. On the eeriest, most surreal car ride he’ll ever take, it felt like he was in a maze, searching for an elusive exit.
Luckily, he found it. Upon arriving at the border, Creek got an alert on his phone. The port city of Odessa that the cab had passed through a little over an hour before was being bombed.
It took Creek another eight or so hours, waiting outside in the freezing cold along with hundreds of other poor souls, to pass into Moldova. Next stop was Romania, and after an excruciating wait to cross that border, Creek was happy to report he would touch down in the States Thursday after a long day of international travel—Romania to Amsterdam to New York to Dulles International in northern Virginia. A momentous reunion with his family awaited.
“I know they not going to let me leave their sight no more,” says Creek.
With the craziest ordeal of his life behind him, talk inevitably turns to the future. In his early 30s, Creek isn’t young, and he’s been playing overseas since 2014, including stints in Denmark, Germany, Holland, Finland, Romania, and Israel. His first season in the Ukrainian SuperLeague was 2019, when he played for Kyiv, the capital of the now-war-torn nation Creek may never return to.
An experience like that will make you reevaluate things, and Creek’s going to have to make a tough decision. A nomad who loves basketball and has carved out a career himself, even though players don’t typically break the bank toiling in some of the lower-tier European leagues, Creek is asked if he’s done playing away from home.
“That’s the golden question. I don’t really know,” he says. “I would hope this isn’t my last season, but it’s really tough going through something like this and wanting to play in another country.”
