“I was making about $80,000 for the season, and so I was juiced,” Middleton said. “I was traveling with my wife then, Renata, and we both were just kind of curious about what it was going to be like. We were fired up, and so when the plane landed, we just bounced right off. Then we got to passport control and we saw the military police guys with the Uzis pointing down, and we were like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa — where are we?’ ”

He shook his head, adding: “Think about it: I grew up in Queens. I’d seen guns. But not a bunch of dudes holding Uzis while you just, like, get your suitcase. That’s when I knew this was going to be different.”

Never inbound the ball.

Middleton is 6 feet 8 inches and plays power forward, so he was charged with taking the ball out of bounds. In the United States, this is rarely a problem.

In Europe, though, Middleton quickly learned that inbounding was an occupational hazard.

“There’s no crowd control in Europe,” he said. “I saw fans with flares — like, on-fire flares, inside an arena, remember — and people waving flags in front of you and all of that. But the worst was the spitting.”

He made a face. “It happened to me early on. I took the ball out after a foul and I felt it on the back of my neck — someone had spit on me from behind,” he said. “In America, that’s it — you’re out of there. In Europe, they don’t care. Everyone does it. I turned around and looked and it was a grandma who’d spit on me. She was like 80 years old. It was ridiculous. From that day forward, I made sure I never took the ball out again.”

Don’t get comfortable ...

Middleton was named the Turkish league’s most valuable player in his first season. He then returned to the United States and played in the N.B.A.’s summer league, figuring he would catch on somewhere. When he didn’t, he returned to Europe — this time to Milan.