Asking Arvydas

At the 1992 Summer Olympic  Games in Barcelona, the world's attention
focused on the U.S. men's basketball team,
making history as the NBA's finest players united. Jordan, Johnson, Bird,
Stockton, Malone and company had the media, the marketing and the fan 
baseto make the rest of the Games pale in comparison. Almost.
Watching from our home in California, my family paid little attention. 
The United States would dominate the tournament, as was expected. But we 
perkedup when the medal ceremonies, destined to be predictable, received 
acolorful jolt upon the announcement of the bronze medal winners. The
Lithuanians came to the platform clothed in the wild tie-dyed garb of 
theirmajor financial donor - American musical icon, the Grateful Dead.
For much of the world, that was the introduction to Lithuanian basketball.
But for the team, the Olympics were as much an ending as a beginning.
The recent crumbling of the Soviet Union had exposed the secret to the
storied basketball success of the Communist power - its backbone was 
made up of Lithuanians. The Lithuanian performance as an independent 
entity in Barcelona meant more than getting to create their own 
basketball team. It embodied the return to independence of Lithuania 
as a nation, after more than 50 years of Soviet tyranny. Even better, 
the Lithuanian national team had beaten what was left of the Soviets on 
the Unified Team in the bronze medal game.

Now you don't vindicate so many years, so much pain and so much loss 
througha sports achievement, but even for Lithuanians who didn't really 
followbasketball, the 12 men wearing crazy T-shirts in the national 
colors ofyellow, green and red with bronze medals around their necks 
signifiedsomething special.

My father was born in an independent Lithuania and his family fled their
home amid the Communist takeover during World War II. My grandfather had
been an officer in the Lithuanian army - which was, of course, not about 
tolet go of its country's freedom without a fight. As the Soviets tried 
toextinguish any rebellion, my grandfather became a wanted man. In fact, 
his two brothers were deported to Siberia just for being related to him. 
For thesafety of his family, my grandfather escaped, taking his wife and 
young son with him.

Dad has watched and worried and awaited the political developments in
Lithuania for decades. And he finds it hard to celebrate sports, with so
many of his family members overwhelmed by the economic duress that has
plagued the country. But even he had to smile at the Olympics, with his
countrymen in Grateful Dead garb and more importantly, the Lithuanian 
flagbeing raised with those of the other two medalists.
Arvydas Sabonis stood on the platform that day in Barcelona, wearing a
bronze medal for his team called Lithuania that shone a million times
brighter than the gold he had earned four years earlier in a Soviet 
uniform. Sabonis could have already been a six-year veteran of the NBA, 
but he had yet to see a game on American soil. The Portland Trail 
Blazers drafted the 7-3 center in the first round of the 1986 NBA Draft 
(24th pick overall), and he chose to stay in Lithuania before finally 
coming to Portland for the 1995-96 season.

Back in the here and now, I received an assignment to present Sabonis 
with the NBA.com Mailbox of the Week questions at the same time my 
father was coming to visit me. In the name of alleviating the language 
issue, I turned to my father for help. I gave Dad the opportunity to 
converse in his native language with a fellow countryman of a different 
generation. And I yanked his vacation plans out from under him so as to 
spend the nextthree days translating. But that's what dads are for. I 
selected fan questions and brought them, with Dad, to Sabonis before he
took to the floor for a recent game. Sabonis was in the training area of 
the locker room, getting his ankles taped. He has struggled with 
injuries throughout his career and arguably came to the NBA in the 
twilight of his playing days, but at 35, his production doesn't seem to 
be slowing. Dad and I were ushered in and told we would be doing the 
interview in thetraining room. Sabonis lay on a table, a heating pad 
under the small of his back. This put my father somewhat at ease, I 
think, because as a doctor, he's used to dealing with patients that 
way ... so it relieved a bit of the formality of a regular interview. I 
turned on the tape recorder and that was the end of my duties. Dad asked 
the questions and Sabonis answered, all in Lithuanian, with me trying 
to follow along by judging Sabonis' facial expressions. But in all 
honesty, I had little clue as to what was going on. Sabonis smiled 
periodically and Dad says that was when he was talking about his 
children.

Several times throughout the meeting, Sabonis lifted himself, so as to 
shift the position of the heating pad on his back and it was obvious he 
was in physical pain - this before the game even started. Yet he 
graciously answered the questions and gave them considerable thought.
As my work neared completion after the interview, I reached out my hand  
and timidly proffered one-third of my Lithuanian repertoire: "Aciu 
labai." (Thank you very very much.) He gave me a wry smile and said in 
English, "You're welcome." Left with a feeling similar to when I was 
very small and my grandmother rebuked me for never learning the 
Lithuanian language, I accompanied my father out of the room.

And Sabonis went to work.