Sabonis faces another season of adjustments

You have to feel sorry for Arvydas Sabonis. The guy goes out of the 
country for a couple of months and before he knows it, he's playing 
in the same town -- but for a different team.

"I don't know," he said this week, when asked about the Portland 
TrailBlazers' acquisition of Kenny Anderson, Isaiah Rider and 
Rasheed Wallace-- and the departure of Rod Strickland, Harvey Grant, 
James Robinson, Buck Williams, Rumeal Robinson and Elmore Spencer. 
"I just don't know what to say. I don't know the new players."

But there's no need to worry. If there's one thing Sabonis can do, 
it's adjust.

He came to the Blazers prior to last season as an untested and 
untried 30-year-old rookie. There were doubts he could drag his 
oft-injured bodythrough a full season of NBA basketball and that, 
even if he did, he could would have anything more than a minimum 
amount of little success.

But that was then and this is now.

Sabonis averaged only 23.8 minutes per game as a rookie, a 
reflection of the care the team took with his physical condition 
during the first half of the season. But he averaged 14.5 points, 
8.1 rebounds and 1.8 assistsin that limited time.

By the end of the season, he became the player the Blazers went to 
in clutchsituations, and this summer he now stands as the 
cornerstone of the club's rebuilding program.

"It was OK," he said of his first season.

Sabonis is in Atlanta with his Lithuanian team, competing in the 
Centennial Olympic Games. It's interesting to watch him in this 
arena, because he'sa different player than he was with the Blazers.

"No question," said Donn Nelson, an assistant coach with the Phoenix 
Sunswho serves in the same capacity for the Lithuanian team. "He is 
has a European personna and an American personna. When he came to 
the United States, he was smart enough to sit back and take a look 
at everything. He was a new guy to the system and he wasn't going to 
do anything that put him in a bad light.

"In Europe, he knows that system. He is more comfortable there -- 
with the game, the referees, everything."

Sabonis did not talk to speak with media reporters after his team's 
Lithuania's first two games, and only after considerable prodding 
did he agree to talk, briefly, after its third.

"He really doesn't like the whole media circus," Nelson said. "He'd 
rather just go back to his room, crack a beer and play cards."

Close friends of Sabonis will tell you he has settled down a lot 
from his younger days, when he once even missed an Olympic medal 
presentation because he was drinking with buddies. During his first 
season in Portland, he tended to his family and seemed to enjoy his 
privacy.

He had his own booth at a Spanish restaurant in downtown Portland, 
a quiet place to relax after games. He bought a huge boat and took 
pride in the big fish he caught.

"I think it took him awhile to get comfortable, basketball-wise," 
said Trail Blazers ' executive Jim Paxson, general manager Bob 
Whitsitt's assistant and the man who took Sabonis under his wing 
last season. "We were very cautious with him because of his physical 
problems in the past.

"I think we were partly responsible for the slowness on the court 
because we were trying to be careful."

Sabonis' off-court adjustments, though, might not have been as 
difficult as we thought. it appeared.

"He understood a lot more English than he let on," Paxson said. 
"He was very self-conscious because he didn't speak it well. But it 
took only a couple of months until he was able to express himself."

Assistant coach Dick Harter credited Sabonis' toughness for getting
him through the difficult times.

"I'd look back at him in the back of our plane and think about him 
arriving in a strange place in the middle of the night and I'd feel 
for him," Harter said. "But he was tough. He shut up and adapted to 
it."

Paxson said it was more difficult for Sabonis' wife, Ingrida, who 
did not understand English and found herself, pregnant and with two 
children, in a foreign land where it seemed to rain all the time.

"Initially, I think it was hard for her," Paxson said. "But she 
decided to take English lessons and it took awhile to find the right 
tutor. But in the middle of January, it seemed to click for her. And 
I think as she became more comfortable, it helped Arvydas.

"I think he was very mature in the way he handled it. I try to put 
myself in his position -- going to Lithuania without knowing anyone 
or understanding the language -- and I'm not sure I could do it."

The Sabonis family got a little tired of the rainy Portland spring, 
and Ingrida took her new baby and went to the family's vacation home 
on the coast of Spain soon after the season ended. But they did not 
dislike Portland.

"After this summer (with the Olympic Games), I think you'll see them 
spending more time here in the summer," Paxson said.

Sabonis said this week he to return to Portland in September to get 
ready for the season and that he's having no physical problems. He 
played 47 minutes for Lithuania in its double-overtime win over 
Croatia, and then all 40 of a loss to Argentina. Wednesday night, he 
played only 5:15 against the USA.

He wasn't hurt in that game, it was just that the Lithuanians -- who 
also gave guard Sarunas Marciulionis the night off to rest an ailing 
knee -- didn't feel think they could win the game, anyway, and 
didn't want to take any chances with his physical condition.

"Precautionary," said Nelson said.

"The game didn't mean to too much to us, and a win would be almost 
impossible," Sabonis said. "We cannot beat the United States if we 
play them again."

After one full season in the NBA, Nelson said he sees a real 
difference in Sabonis.

"Physically, he's in great shape," Nelson he said. "He's tight; firm. 
In 1992, he carried a lot of weight. His wind is better now. I think, 
too, that he's a better player. You play three or four games a week 
against the best talent in the world and it's going to make you a 
better player."

Harter became a huge Sabonis fan through last season and is outspoken in
his praise of the 7-foot-4 center.

"I think if he hadn't been injured, he would have been the greatest 
player of all time," Harter said. "Before he got hurt, they say he 
could move better than (Hakeem) Olajuwon or (Patrick) Ewing. What 
can't he do?"

A man like that will have no trouble adjusting to a few new 
teammates.