LITTLE ROCK — Pro basketball player Jarrett Hart has suffered his share of injuries.

Only once, however, did Super Glue come to the rescue.

A team doctor used the stuff to treat his split left index finger on the sidelines during his playing days at Kansas State University, Hart said, chuckling.

Hart, a lefty, recalled thinking: "You're a doctor, and this is the best you can come up with?"

But Super Glue did the job, as has Hart in a globetrotting career spanning the likes of Arkansas, Greece, Switzerland and Hungary where he's exuded cool leadership and selfless savvy in helping teams succeed.

And by binding teammates so well, the 1999 Little Rock Central High graduate has distinguished himself.

Hart, a dual citizen, has been selected by the Great Britain national basketball team, which will play in the 2012 London Olympics. For his domestic team in Cyprus, he has helped earn a championship and won a player of the year award. Earlier this summer, Hart signed a 3-year contract worth roughly $460,000,

with the team paying his taxes, agent's fees, apartment and car. The biggest perk of all, though, may be the Mediterranean island league's 7-month season, which allows him to play a month with the British team and have ample time to visit family and friends in the summer.

Still, off-season time demands daily workouts and constant practice, said Hart at the Central High basketball gym earlier this summer. "Overseas, it's real cut-throat. If you show up out-of-shape, not ready to go, they'll

send you home real quickly," he said while waiting to play in a pickup game at Philander Smith College.

Practice fits the hard-working Hart just fine, though. It's how the "rugged" 6-foot-3 shooting guard developed inside-outside versatility to complement current NBA All-Star Joe Johnson on route to the 1999 state championship, Central Coach Oliver Fitzpatrick said underneath a framed picture of that 29-3 team.

While Johnson would star as a Razorback in his freshman year, Hart had a tougher time as an Oklahoma Sooner. A kidney injury derailed him for two and a half months; a cousin bound to attend college with him died in an accident en route to Norman, Okla.

The setbacks influenced Hart to return home, and to avoid sitting out a year, he played junior college ball at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, where he became an All-American.

He then played two seasons at Kansas State in Manhattan, Kan., where a coach he had known in high school worked, and by his senior season was a starter leading his team in minutes and three-pointers.

After the season, Coach Fitzpatrick suggested that he use his British passport (Hart was born to Jamaican parents in London) to play overseas. Many European leagues limit the number of American players on each team, which puts a premium on dual citizens, or "passport players", who can play as Europeans

while toting American credentials.

So, in 2004, Hart started his career in Sibenik, Croatia, the birthplace of European legend and NBA star Drazen Petrovic. The locals embraced him, as they would in other countries.

"I had people run up to me and hug me and say 'I've never seen a black person in real life,'" Hart, 28, recalled. Playing for the local team helps: "Everywhere you go, you get in free. You don't stand in line. You go to restaurants, it's 50 percent off."

His Croatian team didn't fare as well, and folded after three months, leaving him with only two months worth of pay, said Hart, who next played in Israel. Such is life in the fluid, chaotic world of lower and middle division European basketball, with teams constantly scouting to fill roster openings in a flash.

"If somebody gets hurt, they're looking for another passport player, and if you're playing well in your league, they'll come and get you," Hart said.

"They'll buy out your contract there and bring you to their team."

But American players have to do their homework on the teams offering better money, says Hart. In the United States, "if you sign a contract and they don't honor it, you can go to court. The legal system is not corrupt."

But in some other nations, team owners can "pay the judge before they pay you, and you get nothing."

Hart considers himself extremely fortunate to play for his Cypriot Keravnos team. He joined the team two years ago, after a stint playing in a Russian town bordering Siberia where "it's like -50 in the winter. I was ready to get out of there."

Keravnos, a Nicosia-based team for which former Razorback Scotty Thurman also played, bought Hart's contract out. He's been on solid financial footing ever since, he added, as the team's multimillionaire owner makes sure that his players are treated well and paid on time.

"In the business world his name is gold, because what he says, he does," Hart said in a clear, deliberate manner resembling his playing style. That economy of movement was on display in late July when Hart's summer league team played a team featuring Corliss Williamson at the Dunbar Community Center in downtown Little Rock.

In the second half, Hart helps orchestrate a comeback from a double-digit deficit, exhorting teammates and pinpointing passes to them for threes. With 1:30 left in the game, Hart's team is up by one with the ball. Hart gets it 20 feet out, then does his thing: executing a crossover that's sick, first mesmerizingly left, then oh-no-he-didn't right, and puts the defender on skates. He jumps, rises and flicks his wrist. Swish.

For a moment, Hart's left index finger is pointed downward in the drooped crane neck of a follow-through stance.

It's just fine.