Catch This!

Even in Lithuanian it sounded like a fish story. Through his 
interpreter Arvydas Sabonis, the Portland Trail Blazers' 31-
year-old rookie center, was telling about the one that got 
away. For 45 minutes on the Columbia River he had gone one-on-
one with a stubborn sturgeon, Sabonis was saying, but after 
winning the battle he had to throw the seven-foot fish back 
because, at close to 300 pounds, it exceeded the legal weight 
limit.

Sabonis's estimate of the size of his catch carried some 
credibility because he is of roughly the same dimensions 
himself. But he must have felt the need to verify his story, 
because he disappeared for a moment into another room of his 
cavernous home in the Portland suburbs and returned with a 
photograph of the sturgeon in question, which looked every 
bit as massive and menacing as Sabonis had described it. He 
loosed a brief thunderclap of a laugh and then used his first 
English words of the conversation: "Like shark, no?"

The same might be said of Sabonis himself. He is huge, 
cunning and capable of great devastation. Like shark, yes. 
At 7'3" and 279 pounds, he is a scoring threat from three-
point range and a master passer. 

"He's an oversized Globetrotter from overseas," says Blazers 
backup point guard Rumeal Robinson. Sabas, as he is known to 
his teammates, is a sleight-of-hand artist with his behind-
the-back, touch, wraparound and no-look passes. "When he has 
the ball," says Portland forward Harvey Grant, "cut to the 
basket and, whatever you do, keep your hands up, or he'll 
make you look bad." 

Lately Sabonis has been one of the main reasons Portland has 
looked so good. After the Blazers' 81-79 win over the Vancouver 
Grizzlies on Sunday, they were an NBA-best 16-2 since March 8, 
which, not coincidentally, was the date that coach P.J. 
Carlesimo inserted Sabonis into the starting lineup. It has 
been a remarkable resurgence for a team that only six weeks ago 
was on the brink of collapse under the weight of its internal 
problems, including locker room scuffles between teammates and 
a personality clash between point guard Rod Strickland and 
Carlesimo. After demanding to be traded, Strickland left the 
Blazers without permission on Feb. 22 and missed six games

When Strickland returned on March 4, he met with Carlesimo 
and agreed to put aside his differences with the coach, at 
least for the rest of this season. A team meeting followed at 
which Carlesimo challenged his players not to become the first 
Trail Blazers to miss the playoffs in 14 years. "We didn't 
want to wind up in the draft lottery," says Portland president 
and general manager Bob Whitsitt. "That's like the Bermuda 
Triangle. Teams get in it and never get out." 

Instead the Blazers, 42-36 at week's end and assured of a spot 
in the playoffs (had the season ended on Sunday, they would 
have been the Western Conference's sixth seed), not only 
prolonged the NBA's longest current streak of postseason 
appearances but also became the fashionable choice to pull a 
first-round upset. "I like the way we're playing, and I wish 
the playoffs started today," Carlesimo said last week, "but 
as far as this talk about our being the team no one wants to 
play, I don't think San Antonio or Utah [the Blazers' possible 
first-round opponents] are losing any sleep over us."

Perhaps they should be. Sabonis, who was named the NBA's 
Player of the Week for March 25-31, averaged 17.6 points, 
10.6 rebounds and 1.7 blocks in only 24.8 minutes per contest 
during Portland's 18-game run.

His 21 points and 15 rebounds in 23 minutes against the 
Dallas Mavericks in the Blazers' 114-99 victory on April 11 
was a typically efficient performance. But he wasn't the only 
reason Portland turned it around. "Could we have done it 
without Sabas? No," says Carlesimo.

"Could we have done it without Strick coming back? No. Could 
we have done it without improving our free throw shooting or 
our defense? No." In that 18-game stretch the Blazers allowed 
opponents a miserly 90.4 points per game. "It's been a
combination of things all coming together at the right time," 
concludes Carlesimo, "a little improvement in a lot of areas."

Strickland performed at close to his usual high standards, 
playing through the pain of a groin injury that has nagged 
him since before the All-Star break in February. "People don't 
really appreciate the sacrifice Rod's making," says Carlesimo. 
"There have been a lot of nights when a half hour before the 
game we've been asking, 'Rod, can you go?'" Strickland's 
answer was always affirmative, although there were games 
during which it was a struggle for him just to run up and down 
the court. Against the Mavericks, Strickland was in such pain 
that he had to take a midgame whirlpool treatment to loosen the 
muscle, but he returned to finish with 17 points and eight 
assists.

Nevertheless, the Trail Blazers' recent success had no effect 
on Strickland's desire to be traded after this season. When 
the subject was brought up last week, he slowly and resolutely 
shook his head. "Nope," he said. "That hasn't changed. I'm 
happy with the way we're playing. Winning makes a lot of 
things seem better, but it doesn't change everything." 

As for Portland's free throw shooting, it improved from a 
horrid 64.3% before the 18-game run to a respectable 70.8% 
during it, a phenomenon for which Carlesimo has no explanation 
other than the law of averages.

Some observers say that the Blazers benefited as well from 
Carlesimo's mellowing on the sidelines. "People I respect 
have said that to me, that I'm treating guys nicer, but I 
don't see any change," he says. "I think it's more that when 
you go 14-2, 15-2, everybody loves everybody." 

Everybody seems to love Sabonis, who has quickly become the 
most popular Trail Blazer among Portland fans after almost a 
decade in which he was little more than a concept. Following 
the 1986 draft, when the Blazers chose him with the last pick 
of the first round, he was playing brilliantly in the Soviet 
Union. But Sabonis, unable to get through the Iron Curtain, 
was rarely seen by American fans. 

He was just 17 when he became a starter on the Soviet national 
team that toured the U.S. in the fall of 1982, during which it 
split a pair of games with Indiana University and narrowly 
lost to a University of Virginia team that featured Ralph 
Sampson. "I thought he was as good a prospect as I had ever 
seen," Indiana coach Bob Knight later said. "He was stronger 
than Bill Walton. I couldn't get over what potential he had. 
Such a great raw talent." 

In the '80s Sabonis starred for Lithuania's Zalgiris Kaunas 
team, which he led to three consecutive Soviet Union titles, 
and for the Soviet national team. But injuries began to 
diminish some of Sabonis's skills. While playing for Zalgiris 
Kaunas in 1987, he ruptured his right Achilles tendon. Only 
three months later, when he fell while climbing a flight of 
stairs to answer the phone, he ruptured the tendon again 
before it had fully healed. Tendinitis in his knees followed, 
and before long Sabonis was not only wearing a heavy ankle 
brace for the Achilles but also encasing his knees and feet 
in ice after games.

Despite his injuries Sabonis maintained his status as one of 
the best European players ever. After he helped lead the 
U.S.S.R. to a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, Soviet coach 
Aleksandr Gomelsky suggested that it might be time for Sabonis 
to test himself in the NBA. Sabonis took Gomelsky into the 
locker room, rolled down his socks to reveal the scars and 
discoloration below his calves and asked, "Do you think I can 
play in the NBA with these?" 

Still, Sabonis flirted with the possibility of signing with 
the Blazers, briefly moving to Portland so the team's medical 
staff could oversee his recovery from his Achilles tendon 
operations. But his own doubts about his health and the lure 
of lucrative deals overseas persuaded him to return to Europe. 
When Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union 
in 1991, Sabonis was playing in Spain. Then, when a three-year 
deal with Real Madrid expired after last season, he signed a 
five-year, $12 million contract with the Blazers. "I decided 
it was now for the NBA or never," he says.

"Everyone wants to play in the NBA, and I thought that if I 
didn't try, it would always come back to me in my mind: Could 
I have done it?

There's no longer any doubt in anyone's mind that he can play 
in the NBA, even though he is not nearly as agile as he was 
in his prime. "The pain is always there," he says of his 
scarred legs. "If I didn't feel it, I would think maybe I was 
dead."

In fact, he will draw votes for both the Sixth Man and the 
Rookie of the Year awards. His insertion into the starting 
lineup has hurt his chances of winning the former--since he 
will have come off the bench in more games than he started, 
he would still be eligible--and his status as a 31-year-old 
European legend makes it hard to think of him as a rookie. 
But Sabonis is picking up supporters for Rookie of the Year, 
including coaches Bill Fitch of the Los Angeles Clippers and 
George Karl of the Seattle SuperSonics. "There's no question," 
Karl says. "It's not even close. He has helped his team 
rebuild an attitude. His starting and his passing and his 
presence have given that team a confidence it didn't have 
earlier in the year." 

What might Sabonis have achieved if he had entered the NBA in 
his prime? Los Angeles Lakers center Vlade Divac, a Serbian 
who played against Sabonis in Europe, has said that Sabonis 
could have been as good as the New York Knicks' Patrick Ewing, 
the Houston Rockets' Hakeem Olajuwon or the Orlando Magic's 
Shaquille O'Neal. Sabonis smiles slightly when told of this 
assessment. "I have thought about it, but I have not worried 
about it," he says. "I only know that it is better that I am 
here now than not at all." 

Sabonis's uncertain condition was the reason Chris Dudley 
started 59 of the first 60 games of the season for the Blazers 
and Sabonis came off the bench, most often to play the second 
and fourth quarters. "We wanted to see how his body would 
hold up," Carlesimo says. "When it became clear he could 
handle 20 to 24 minutes, we decided we could try stretching 
him out a little bit, but you still won't see him go past 28 
to 30 minutes very often, if at all." 

Although he usually wears the expression of a weary veteran, 
Sabonis has taken care to display the deference of a rookie. 
When asked about the Strickland-Carlesimo issue, he says, "I 
am a first-year player, so I should not comment." Even though 
he understands English quite well (he's also fluent in Polish 
and Spanish, in addition to Lithuanian and Russian), he prefers 
to speak through an interpreter during interviews for fear of 
using the wrong English word or phrase and saying something 
that could be misconstrued. He has also muted his game 
somewhat, excising the theatrics that were a part of his style 
in Europe, where he was known for playing to the crowd with 
his gestures and making the overly flashy pass. The new, 
toned-down style may be part of Sabonis's broader maturation. 
He once had a reputation for enjoying the postgame parties 
almost as much as the games. Legend has it that in Lithuania 
his countrymen would go into a liquor store and instead of 
asking for vodka, request "a Sabonis." At the 1992 Olympics, 
after helping Lithuania win the bronze medal in the afternoon, 
he celebrated with such abandon that he missed the medal 
presentation in the evening.

But these days Sabonis goes home to his wife, Ingrida, a 
former model and actress, and his two sons, Zygimantas, 5, 
and Tautvydas, 4. Ingrida is expecting a third child in late 
April or early May--"just about the time the playoffs start," 
Sabonis says. "I am sure she will be kind enough to have the 
baby on an off day."

Six weeks ago the possibility of the birth's interfering with 
a Portland postseason game seemed remote, but the Blazers now 
expect to be busy well into May. "If people think we're just 
going to be in and out in a hurry, that's O.K.," Strickland 
says. "We'll just lay low and then surprise them." Like 
sharks, no?