Lithuanian Basketball 'God' Returns to Moscow

By Carl Schreck 
Staff Writer 

In basketball circles, the name Arvydas Sabonis is inseparable 
from the question, "What if?"

What if Sabonis, a 220-centimeter Lithuanian and one of the 
most stunning talents in the history of the game, had left the 
Soviet Union for the NBA during his prime in the mid-1980s?

What if his once-powerful legs had not been ravaged by 
on-court injuries and freak off-court accidents?

And what if, even after his injuries, he had immediately taken 
his game to the United States as the Soviet Union was 
collapsing?

For basketball connoisseurs, the answer to these questions is 
as evident as it is depressing: He would have been one of the 
greatest centers in NBA history.

Sabonis, 39 on Friday, is in Moscow on Thursday to suit up for 
his hometown club, Zalgiris of Kaunas, Lithuania, against 
European powerhouse CSKA Moscow. 

The occasion is a Euroleague match-up between the two clubs 
that were Soviet basketball's fiercest rivals in the 1980s. It 
is likely one of Sabonis' last playing appearances in Moscow, 
as he winds down his career at the club he started out with.

In Lithuania, where basketball is sacred, Sabonis is a god. In 
the rest of the European hoops world, he is only a step down 
from deification.

Glancing at his resume, it's not hard to see why. Except for 
an NBA championship, he has won practically everything there 
is to win in basketball.

He won three Soviet championships with Zalgiris, national and 
European club championships with Spanish club teams, two 
European Championship gold medals and one Olympic gold medal. 
He was named European Player of the Year six times in the 
1980s and 1990s, and MVP of the 1985 European Championships.

But apart from championships and personal accolades, Sabonis 
is as renowned for a flair and versatility rarely seen in a 
player his size. He was a giant who played the game like a 
guard, grabbing rebounds and leading fastbreaks, eventually 
whipping a no-look pass to an unsuspecting teammate or 
stopping on a dime to drain a 3-pointer. 

In a 1986 article on Sabonis in The Atlantic Monthly, American 
basketball guru Pete Newell described one of the most 
unbelievable plays he'd ever seen.

"A rebound bounced high off the rim and over toward the 
corner," Newell recounted. "Sabonis went up for it way out 
there, took the ball in one hand and -- still up in the air, 
off balance -- swept the ball backhand, like a discuss thrower 
in reverse, and hit a teammate in stride downcourt 86 feet 
away for an easy layup. I'd never seen a play like it."

Unfortunately, NBA fans never saw Sabonis at the top of his 
game showing his genius against America's best.

The Portland Trail Blazers selected the Lithuanian legend in 
the 1986 draft, but it was basically a throw-away pick, 
considering the Soviet authorities were not anxious to let a 
hero from one of their more restless republics seek fame and 
fortune in the West.

Furthermore, Sabonis' legs were proving fragile. He ruptured 
an Achilles tendon in 1987, and later aggravated the injury 
when he fell down the stairs racing to answer a phone call. 
His skill and ingenuity were it still intact, but he would
never regain the spryness and spring of his youth.

Sabonis left the Soviet Union to play in Spain in 1989, 
eventually landing with Real Madrid in 1992. Having nothing 
left to win in Europe, he finally tried his luck in the NBA in 
1995, joining the Trail Blazers. But by then he was a shadow 
of his former self. 

Despite the injuries, a massive center with a deft 
understanding of the game is hard to come by, and Sabonis 
spent a stellar seven seasons with Portland, giving the team a 
presence in the middle and quickly becoming a fan favorite 
with his circus passes. He retired from the NBA last season, 
going home to Lithuania to play for Zalgiris. 

Injuries and bad timing aside, just how good could Sabonis 
have been?

Mike Dunleavy, who coached Sabonis in Portland, said in 2001 
that no center in the NBA at that time could have handled 
Sabonis in his prime, not even the game's most dominant 
player, the Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal.

Controversial college coaching great Bobby Knight was no less 
impressed when he saw the 17-year-old Sabonis play against his 
Indiana University squad during the Soviet national team's 
1982 U.S. tour.

"I thought he was as good a prospect as I had ever seen," 
Knight said afterward. "He was stronger than Bill Walton. I 
couldn't get over what potential he had. Such a great raw 
talent."

But perhaps no one is more qualified to comment on Sabonis' 
potential than Alexander Gomelsky. 

Gomelsky, the patriarch of Soviet and Russian basketball who 
coached CSKA against the center's Zalgiris teams, was at the 
helm of the Sabonis-led Soviet national team that won the gold 
medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, defeating a U.S. squad led 
by future hall-of-fame center David Robinson in the semifinals.

"He was the greatest European player of the last 100 years," 
Gomelsky told The Moscow Times this week. "He came to the NBA 
too late, obviously. But when you talk about players like 
Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell, Sabonis was 
certainly on that level."

Only about 5,000 fans will get to see Sabonis live in 
Thursday's Zalgiris-CSKA match-up at the CSKA Universal Sports 
Complex. The game has been sold out for two weeks, with the 
army team marketing it as "CSKA vs. 224 centimeters of 
Sabonis." 

Anyone else interested in seeing the aging legend play will 
have to watch the 9 p.m. broadcast on 7TV.

And even though Sabonis is far from being the player that once 
had NBA scouts drooling, the politically loaded history of the 
CSKA-Zalgiris rivalry offers an intriguing backdrop.

Kaunas, Lithuania's second-largest city and a town where 
sports fans watch Zalgiris games in dance clubs before the 
disco ball is lowered, became a key symbol for the growing 
Lithuanian nationalist movement of the late 20th century. 

It was out front of the Kaunas Musical Theater in 1972 where a 
student named Romas Kalanta immolated himself to protest 
Soviet rule, sparking a student rebellion that was put down by 
Soviet troops.

But because Lithuanians had little hope of putting up any 
armed resistance to the Soviet Union, they turned to sports as 
a means of symbolically defeating the oppressors, said Arunas 
Pakula, manager for international operations at Zalgiris and a 
basketball journalist for the Vilnius newspaper Lietuvos Rytas.

"When our boxer Algirdas Socikas knocked out the Soviet great 
Nikolai Korolyov after World War II, there was a national 
celebration," Pakula said. "There were old women in the 
villages who didn't know anything about sports, but they knew 
who Algirdas Socikas was."

No team was a greater symbol of Lithuanian resistance that 
Zalgiris.

"CSKA was the Red Army team, and people identified the Red 
Army with all of the evils that came to Lithuania, " Pakula 
said. "So when CSKA came to Kaunas, everybody wanted to see 
Zalgiris beat them. There would be 100,000 ticket requests, 
and the gym only had 5,000 seats."

But even a zealous fan base isn't enough on its own to win 
championships, and from 1945 to 1984 the dominant Red Army 
team won 21 Soviet championships, including nine straight 
titles from 1976 to 1984. Zalgiris managed to win just one 
during that stretch, in 1951.

Zalgiris' fortunes began to change in the 1980s with the 
emergence of Sabonis, and at the height of the rivalry the 
Kaunas club defeated CSKA in the finals three seasons in a row 
from 1985-87.

In addition to the on-court battles and political symbolism, 
the Zalgiris-CSKA rivalry was marked by Lithuanian fears of 
behind-the-scenes intrigues in Moscow to rob the country of 
its top players.

The Lithuanians were deathly afraid that CSKA would pull out 
the trump card that allowed the team to fill its ranks with 
the Soviet Union's best young players: the draft.

As the official club of the Red Army, CSKA had the advantage 
of being able to draft young athletes for military service, 
though the players typically spent more time in sneakers and 
tank-tops than in fatigues and ***valenky***, traditional 
Russian winter boots.

In order to prevent Sabonis from being drafted and suiting up 
for CSKA, in the early 1980s he was matriculated into an 
agriculture institute in Kaunas. Though he rarely if ever 
attended classes, Pakula said there was one stipulation he had 
to adhere to.

"Once a month or so, he would have attend an evening faculty 
meeting at the institute and talk about basketball," Pakula 
said. "The room was always packed for those meetings. All of 
the professors wanted to hear him talk."

Other Lithuanian players were also enrolled in the institute 
for the same purpose, Pakula said, but the less talented ones 
actually had to attend classes.

Legend has it that as a backup plan to avoid being drafted, 
Lithuanian officials had prepared a document confirming that 
Sabonis had adopted two children from a local orphanage, thus 
giving him a military deferral as a father.

Despite CSKA's habit of stacking its roster with the top 
talent from every corner of the Soviet Union, Gomelsky said he 
never dreamt of trying to snatch Sabonis from his homeland. 

"Of course we could have [drafted him], but I didn't want to 
do it," Gomelsky said. "The coaches in Lithuania knew that I 
wanted them to play excellent basketball up there.

"Plus, Sabonis would have never come to Moscow to play for 
CSKA," Gomelsky said. "Anybody who knows him knows that he 
could never play for the Red Army against his native country. 
He is so popular there, he could become president of the 
country if he ever wanted to."

Gomelsky's mention of Sabonis' political prospects isn't just 
a stray comment. 

His status as a national hero has prompted media speculation 
that he could take up a political career in Lithuania once he 
hangs up his sneakers for good. But he has consistently 
downplayed any such suggestions.

"I still have a lot of work to do in basketball," Sabonis told 
Kommersant Sport this week. "There are already enough people ? 
looking for lucrative jobs [in politics] without me."

But according to Pakula, Sabonis has already been offered to 
assume one high-profile presidential duty.

Pakula said a Lithuanian state television station has decided 
not to ask President Rolandas Paksas to hold the annual 
address to his countrymen ahead of the New Year. 

Paksas is facing impeachment over a scandal concerning his 
office's alleged connections with Russian organized crime.

According to Pakula, television representatives have asked 
Sabonis to give this year's speech instead, an offer that the 
player has declined.

"But he's been sick this past week," Pakula said. "So maybe 
he'll change his mind when he's feeling better."

Officials at state-run television stations LRT and LNK said 
they did not know of such an offer.

Basketball stars-cum-politicians are not without precedent in 
Lithuania. In October 2000, Gediminas Budnikas, who rose to 
fame as a Zalgiris and Soviet national team player in the 
1960s and 1970s, was elected mayor of Kaunas, though he 
resigned three months later. 

Pakula said he doubts that Sabonis will ever throw his 300 
pounds into the political arena, but admits he would certainly 
find supporters among the electorate should he ever decide to 
run for office.

"Everybody would vote for him," he said.

Lithuanian basketball fans may yet have to add another, "What 
if?" to the list.