For Alex Len, Avangard is where he had his first in-game dunk. But it was not just Avangard— the gym in Kyiv where the national team trained since 2013 was also bombed. A year ago, Len got a hand tattoo of the official coat of arms of Ukraine, a trident meant to symbolize Ukrainian warriors of the past protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine today. He was on All-Star break last February when the escalation began. He tried to convince his family to evacuate early, selling it as a family vacation to Turkey, but they wanted to remain. “The day of the [February] 24th, I probably had maybe 200 plus messages,” he says.