Lebanese Players Pursue Basketball Dreams in Türkiye
In a quiet corner of central Türkiye, far from the noise of Istanbul and Izmir, two young Lebanese internationals are betting on themselves.
Point guard Mariam Jomaa, 22, and center Razan Thebian, 21, have left Beirut behind for Eskisehir, chasing sharper skills, tougher habits and, possibly, a future in Turkish basketball.
They did not arrive through an agent or a federation program. They arrived through a search bar.
From social media search to six-day grind
Scrolling through social media and online databases, the pair sifted through options in Istanbul, Izmir and Eskisehir, comparing coaches, methods and reputations. The trail led them to Eskisehir Kaplanlari Sports Club and coach Ali Ihsan Kucuk.
They messaged him directly. No promises of contracts, no guarantees of minutes. Just a request: time in the gym and a plan to get better.
Kucuk, who had never before been contacted by foreign players specifically to travel and train with him, agreed. What followed was a tailored, six-day-a-week program in Eskisehir, with daily sessions running around two to two and a half hours.
The focus is relentless: athletic performance, shooting, and the fundamentals that separate good players from professionals. Around that core, Kucuk layers defensive and offensive organization, building structure on top of raw work.
The coach has been struck by what cannot be drawn on a whiteboard.
Their energy. Their determination. Their appetite to learn.
Raising the bar before the Lebanese season
Time is tight. With roughly a month to go before their domestic leagues tip off in Lebanon, every session carries weight.
Jomaa, who runs the floor for Beirut First Club in the Lebanese Women's Basketball League and represents the national team at point guard, came with a clear objective: return home a better player than the one who left.
“We wanted to train better and improve ourselves. We knew that Türkiye has some of the best basketball leagues, so we decided to come here,” she said, outlining the simple logic behind a complex move.
She and Thebian found Kucuk online, reached out themselves, and built the trip around his response. Once in Eskisehir, they discovered that improvement meant confronting blind spots they did not know they had.
Several elements of the program were completely new to them, forcing adjustments in technique and mindset. The work has exposed areas they had not previously realized needed attention, tightening the gaps that high-level competition will quickly exploit.
New ideas, new ambitions
For Thebian, a center with Tadamon Zouk in Lebanon's Women's Basketball Second League, the experience has been just as jarring and just as welcome.
The sessions in Eskisehir have introduced different approaches to training, new ways of thinking about both ends of the floor, and a level of detail that has left her satisfied with the decision to step outside her comfort zone.
The pair chose Türkiye because of its reputation: deep leagues, demanding standards, and a culture that has turned the country into a serious basketball hub. Now that they have had a taste of that environment, their ambitions have shifted.
Both Jomaa and Thebian have made it clear they would be interested in continuing their careers in Türkiye in the future.
For now, Eskisehir is just a training camp, a hard month of work before the Lebanese season begins. But for two young players who found a coach on a screen and turned a search result into a real court, it may also be the first step toward a very different basketball life.
