There was a time when Europe was supposed to be a dead end for professional basketball players. You remember those days? You'd wonder how one of the good-but-not-NBA-good from one of your college's better teams was faring, and someone would ask if he was in the NBA, and you'd look him up and he'd be playing somewhere in Turkey, and you'd sort of scoff? It was like finding out the high school quarterback was still living at home with his parents, scraping by working the same crappy video store job as in high school.

Just as living with one's parents out of college no longer carries the same stigma -- that's what my friends tell each other; it beats paying rent in the city, anyway -- so has European basketball become a suddenly attractive option. We've already waved farewell to Florida guard Nick Calathes, who will play in Greece, and Clemson guard Terrence Oglesby, who will likely play in Italy or Spain. It makes sense, as both players have dual European citizenship, and neither player counts against his team's non-citizen player cap, which prevents European teams from having more than two foreign players. In Calathes' case, he can make first-round NBA money without sweating the draft; Oglesby, who is not likely to ever play in the NBA, can use Europe as his get-out-of-Clemson card now.

Tenneessee's Tyler Smith -- who is not a dual citizen of any European country, and who is still working hard to be in the NBA -- would seem to be less of a fit. But here he is, debating the international game:

Smith, who was in Knoxville on Monday after returning from the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago over the weekend, said the money would have to be right. Smith, a rising senior forward, originally wasn't open to the idea of playing overseas. But after learning how well former UT player Marcus Haislip is faring playing professionally in Italy, both from a financial and developmental standpoint, Smith is reconsidering.

And why not? European basketball is more money than it used to be; it's more organized and safe than ever before; and high-profile transfers like Josh Childress and Brandon Jennings have removed the stigma of the European game as the place where marginal college players go to cash in for a few years before they come back to America and start the car dealership. If you're Tyler Smith, and you have no guarantees from the NBA, you're not doing yourself a favor ignoring Europe. You're closing off a potential source of cash flow. What pro hoopster wants to do that?