Pandora's BOX

IN 1989 A SOVIET OLYMPIC HERO FROM LITHUANIA SIGNED WITH THE WARRIORS. THREE DECADES LATER THE GLOBAL STARS WHO HAVE FOLLOWED IN THE PATH OF SARUNAS MARCIULIONIS HAVE TRANSFORMED THE NBA

ON OPENING NIGHT, this season's NBA rosters featured 108 international players from 42 countries and territories. Many of those players are among the game's brightest stars. Latvia's Kristaps Porzingis regularly sends Madison Square Garden into unicorn-flavored euphoria. Giannis Antetokounmpo, of Greek and Nigerian descent, is the leader in All-Star voting across the league. Joel Embiid is a Cameroonian cult hero in Philadelphia, while Australia's Ben Simmons is one of the more dominant rookies of the past decade. All of them have injected new life into the league.

"It's good to see," Porzingis says. "So many players are coming over here and playing at a high level, in the best league in the world. It means we're doing something right as a basketball system."

Indeed, the NBA has spent the past 30 years working to integrate international players and building toward the era fans have today. It's a story with several chapters. To appreciate what the league has built and how it changed the sport, SI spoke to the people who lived this journey.

SARUNAS MARCIULIONIS: I grew up in the city of Kaunas. That was the basketball capital of Lithuania. All kids, everyone, played basketball. But I started with tennis. I played for four or five years, until I was about 10. But then my parents said, "O.K., for you, not enough physical contact. You have to play basketball."

ALEXANDER WOLFF (former SI senior writer, author of Big Game, Small World): I remember talking to Sarunas's sister. She told me that he had won some big tennis title in Lithuania, but he had done it by hitting nothing but forehands. He's a lefty, but he would switch the racket over and hit righthanded forehands instead of backhands. That's emblematic of not just the way he played, but his whole personality.

CHRIS MULLIN (Marciulionis's Warriors teammate): Before [Marciulionis] went through the league, the scouting report was probably, "Here's this European guy, probably a spot-up shooter, let's get into him and be aggressive." But that whole thing was flipped. He was more physical than any guard in the league.

DON NELSON (Marciulionis's first coach): My son Donnie played international basketball against Sarunas, so he turned me on to the international game.

DONNIE NELSON (Don's assistant coach): I was playing for Athletes in Action. It was a Christian basketball team, a goodwill team that went all over the world. We had gone behind the Iron Curtain. At the time, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union. I think I held Sarunas to about 40 points. After the game the two teams went to dinner. There was somebody on their side who spoke English. And after a guy torches you, there's a certain bond. So through a third guy, we developed a little relationship.

MARCIULIONIS: We weren't really able to talk. You know, the language barrier. It was more like dog language. Like how dogs can understand humans, but can't speak. But I liked when people were smiling and excited, paying attention. That part was very attractive. [Donnie] was someone who was very positive toward me.

DONNIE NELSON: Everyone knew who [Soviet center] Arvydas Sabonis was, and there were some other potential players, but no one thought you could ever get them out of the Soviet Union. So when I went over there, it wasn't with the idea of scouting.

MARCIULIONIS: At that time there was no media coverage about the draft, how it works. We had no idea [that Sabonis had been drafted by the Hawks in 1986]. He didn't know, either, what the draft was about. We had the Iron Curtain, you know? So we had no information at all.

DONNIE NELSON: A year or two later Athletes in Action played the Soviet senior team in a three-game series in America—in San Diego, in Sacramento and at the Forum in L.A. Sarunas and I recognized each other. And that trip is where we started to talk seriously about the NBA.

MARCIULIONIS: I remember this I-5, and all those freeways on top of each other. It was very impressive. We drove from San Diego to L.A. It was like first love.

DONNIE NELSON: It was right around Halloween. [The Soviet players] just loved all these people walking around with bags and masks. And then we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, and we introduced some of the locals to the Soviet team. They had an absolute blast.

MARCIULIONIS: Now, after how many years, I'm still going back and spending winters in Solana Beach and La Jolla. San Diego stuck in my brain. It was a dream place.

DONNIE NELSON: This was in 1987. There was some talk among the [Soviet] team that "Hey, if we end up winning the gold medal in '88...." The rumor was that they would be given strong consideration to let them go and play in the NBA. I think [Soviet coach] Alexander Gomelsky was telling the guys that, and he was one of the all-time motivators. Nothing motivates a human being more than freedom, I can tell you that.

MARCIULIONIS: We had to trust Gomelsky. And I don't think it was joke, but of course it wasn't in written form, either. Somehow if we were going to win, always there was a kind of promise that he was going to help us to leave.

After losing its opening game to Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union won seven in a row, including an 82--76 semifinal victory over a team of U.S. collegians and a 76--63 win over Yugoslavia in the gold medal game, in which Marciulionis led the U.S.S.R. with 21 points.

DONNIE NELSON: That's when things really started to ramp up. [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev [indicated] that local republics would be given more autonomy over their natural resources. So what we did was take an industrial argument and apply it to human beings. We made the case within Lithuania, "What's more of a natural resource than a guy who was born and bred here? Sarunas is more Lithuanian than a piece of grain." That started to resonate. The folks in Lithuania rallied around Sarunas.

DON NELSON: We actually went to the [Soviet consulate] in San Francisco. There were a lot of issues to work through.

DONNIE NELSON: If you look at the Soviet Union's history, there were a lot of things that were promised and then didn't happen.

KIM BOHUNY (NBA senior vice president, international basketball operations): The tricky part was, once they were allowed to go, where are they gonna go? And then you had [the Soviet sports committee] involved in retaining money from professional contracts. What would be their take?

MARCIULIONIS: There was a [recruiting] rivalry between Golden State and Atlanta. Because of the Soviet relationship with [Hawks owner] Ted Turner, [Moscow] wanted to send me and Volkov to Atlanta. But somehow, it was my choice.

In June the 6' 5", 200-pound Marciulionis signed a three-year, $3.9 million contract. He said he got to keep "more than half," but various reports estimated the Soviets took as much as 75%. In October he reported to his first training camp.

MARCIULIONIS: California, I visualized this nice vacation area. Palms trees, a beach. Then I got to San Francisco and it's, "No. No, you can't swim here." How can it be so cold? You can't get in the water?

BOHUNY: When the pioneers came over, they came from Eastern Europe, where at that point they just didn't have a lot of material things.

DONNIE NELSON: When you lived in the Soviet Union, part of every day is just getting food. It's a daily grind. So when [Sarunas] came over here and he and his wife walked into a supermarket for the first time, it was really hard for them to believe: the abundance, the selection, all the goods and services we have in this country....

MARCIULIONIS: I'd been to the United States, so I'd been to supermarkets. To say that I was, like, crying, that's probably a little bit too much. But yes, it was very exciting to see such variety of fruits and vegetables.

DONNIE NELSON: I think I was more of a translator in year one than an assistant coach.

DON NELSON: I didn't speak Lithuanian or Russian. Donnie only knew about 100 words, so it was frustrating for both sides.

DONNIE NELSON: At that point Sarunas and I had been through quite a bit together and there was a trust factor. [But] rookies lose games. Rookies make mistakes. That's not exactly music to a head coach's ears a lot of times. So my dad, historically, has been fairly hard on rookies. The most important thing is that Sarunas was treated like an American rookie. No special treatment. And I think part of my dad's methodology was to actually be a little bit harder on Sarunas so that the team would rally around him. And that did happen.

MULLIN: Sarunas just kept plugging away and kept his head down.

DON NELSON: The players were in awe of what he was able to do, how strong he was and how competitive he was. We hadn't seen anything like him.

MULLIN: Look, Nellie's one of the greatest coaches of all time. Very innovative, very on the fly. Even for guys who've been around him, you gotta be on your toes; he'll change things quickly. So just imagine someone who just came over to this country, has the language barrier to deal with, and now he's dealing with the Einstein of basketball and trying to keep up.

DONNIE NELSON: I'm kinda glad that Sarunas's language wasn't so good. I don't think he knew half the things my dad was yelling at him.

MARCIULIONIS: Nellie wanted me to be better. And there were some times when he was making jokes, everybody's laughing in the first six rows, and I'm just running down the floor and I know, "So, he made a joke about me." But I don't understand, so I can't be frustrated.

DON NELSON: I remember one time, he'd committed another one of my cardinal sins, and I saw film of myself yelling at him. I made a change. I said [to myself], "You know, you're not doing a good job here. You're too negative."

MARCIULIONIS: In the middle of the second season there was a big conversation. Nellie just said, "Sarunas you're not improving. I give you a chance, but you're not where I want you to be. So help me help you."

DON NELSON: Once I told him, "O.K., I'm gonna change how I coach you," he took off.

MULLIN: I remember playing against the Bulls one night. Sarunas was shooting a free throw, and Scottie [Pippen] and Michael [Jordan] were kind of arguing about who was going to guard him. They were like, "Man, this guy's crazy. He's gonna run me over, man. You take him." So he had developed a reputation. He was kind of like a power forward playing two-guard.

After Lithuania secured its independence in 1991, Marciulionis spearheaded the movement to bring Lithuanian basketball to the '92 Games. With Donnie Nelson as an assistant, Lithuania beat the Unified Team—a squad made up of players from 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics, including Russia—in the bronze medal game, with Marciulionis scoring 29 points.

MULLIN: He basically put that whole basketball program together by himself. You talk about a guy like Lenny Wilkens as a player-coach—that's something you'll never see again, right? Well, Sarunas was basically player, coach, GM, owner, marketing director. [He was] raising money with the Grateful Dead, guys from Apple were helping him, and he was doing all this during the NBA season.

WOLFF: I was talking to some shoe company rep just before the Olympics. He was kind of running Donnie down as being unpatriotic. And I'm thinking to myself, This is such an amazing story. It became a huge thing, and they got all this publicity. And all I could think was, You're not doing your job, Mr. Shoe Company.

MULLIN: I remember Sarunas saying, "Chris, are you free tonight? We're having a little get-together in this bar in the city." We go there, the Grateful Dead are there selling T-shirts, and I'm like, "Well, this ain't gonna work." Sure enough, there they are on the medal stand with their Grateful Dead T-shirts. And I'm like, "Holy s---, it did work."

MARCIULIONIS: Everybody was celebrating and screaming. And I went to shower with my shoes on, with my full uniform, just standing there with one idea: It's not that I won, but what if I lost? I don't know what I would do with myself. Then, it was just happiness and tears.

Marciulionis returned to the NBA, but injuries cut his career short. He had stints with three more teams, playing his last game in 1996 at age 32. He returned home to Lithuania, where he manages several businesses and remains a hero to the basketball-crazed nation. In 2014, 25 years after his first season in the NBA, Marciulionis was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

MARCIULIONIS: There was a joke once. Tony Parker's father—we were hanging out before a game in Slovenia. He said, "Sarunas, you know how you could be a rich guy? You should go collect 2% from all the players who went from Europe to the NBA." I thought that was pretty funny.

DONNIE NELSON: When I first started in the league, old-school guys were like, "Those guys over there they don't understand, they don't guard, they won't fit in. " And then you had a wave of guys from the fallen Soviet Union, that next group that came through—Marciulionis, Volkov, [Toni] Kukoc; Sabonis came later—there was a period of time where those guys built the bridge of success.

MULLIN: To me, Sarunas was really the first guy who came over, established himself. I think everyone else [in Europe] said, "Wow, we can do this."

DON NELSON: And then, that kind of opened Pandora's box.

Part 1

How It All Began

NBA commissioner David Stern first met FIBA secretary general Borislav Stankovic in 1984 during a basketball convention in Milan. The meeting was brief, but cordial. A few years later they met again, and the relationship spawned the NBA's first official partnership with FIBA. In '87 the Bucks hosted a round-robin tournament featuring the Soviet national team and Tracer Milano, an Italian club. Two years later Stankovic and Stern agreed to let NBA players compete at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics because, as Stankovic reasoned, "you can only get better by playing against the best." That spawned the Dream Team, which is credited with creating a revolution across European basketball.

For the NBA, though, the revolution started earlier—at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. In '89 the league welcomed a wave of Eastern European pioneers led by Vlade Divac (from Serbia), Alexander Volkov (Russia), Drazen Petrovic (Croatia) and Sarunas Marciulionis, a 25-year-old shooting guard from Lithuania who in his third season would average 18.9 points for the 55-win Warriors and finish as the runner-up for the Sixth Man Award.

Part 2

How It Works Now

TIMOFEY MOZGOV (Nets center, Russia): The first year, I didn't speak great English. So sometimes when they tried to give me rookie duties, I'd act like I didn't speak English. I understood what they wanted to me to do—"Hey hey, bring those towels out." But then I go, "What? What?"

DARIO SARIC (left, 76ers forward, Croatia): That commercial, that show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I think that's not true. The last couple of months, I didn't see the sun. I like Philly, but I'm from a very sunny part of Croatia, so the weather, it could be better.

Part 3

How Dirk Changed Everything

DON NELSON (Dirk Nowitzki's first coach): The things he was able to do—dribble, pass, run, rebound, play outside. We did a whole bunch of things that we probably shouldn't have done to keep him from going to other teams and having interviews. We tried to hide him the best we could.

DONNIE NELSON: Oh, I think that's my dad, just.... There's no way we could do that. The reality is, you just can't [hide a player].

MARC STEIN (NBA writer): I remember writing something about Dirk (left) in the days leading up to the draft, and then Nellie started trying to throw me off the scent. He told me that Dan Gadzuric kicked Dirk's ass in a workout.

Part 4

How the Locker Room Helps

MARCIN GORTAT (Wizards center, Poland): If you're a guy who likes to be alone and spend time on his own, that's not a good sign. Because if there's a team bonding party, you go to a restaurant, you go to a club, or one of the players organizes a party at his house to watch the boxing, the football game—you just gotta go. You're gonna get to know the guys, and they're gonna get to know you. You get to share your culture with your teammates.

KIRSTAPS PORZINGIS (above, Knicks forward, Latvia): The first thing I had to do was teach them how to pronounce Latvia. I'd get La-tivia and La-tiva and all kinds of names. But eventually they learned a lot about my country. A couple of the guys, including Kyle O'Quinn, Sasha Vujajic and Kevin Seraphin, even came over.

GORTAT: And then, it sounds crazy, but you gotta learn to drink brown drinks. Unfortunately. You gotta learn to drink whiskey, Hennessy, cognac—most of the brothers in the league drink brown drinks. I'm not saying you gotta give up [beers and vodka], but you gotta learn. If there's a brother that wants to share a drink with you and have a conversation, you can't just tell him, "Hey, I don't drink that." That's just how it is, people gotta understand.

Part 5

How the World Has Changed

BOHUNY: It's building, building, building. [Houston forward] Luc Mbah a Moute learned about [the NBA's] Basketball Without Borders in 2003. He wasn't even sure basketball was going to be his sport, but he comes, excels, gets [into] college. Then we go and talk to Luc: "Can you do a camp to make sure we're finding the best young talent?" And then he finds Joel Embiid.

SERGE IBAKA (above, Raptors forward, Congo): I go back almost every summer to work in Africa. I wish I had the opportunities that those kids have now.

MASAI UJIRI (Raptors president, Nigeria): Now it's actually kids trying to get better. Because if you don't, there's another person who'll take it from you. You think you're doing s--- in Brazil? There's another person in Europe doing the same thing. The more competition there is, people work even harder.

Part 6

How the NBA Changed

NOWITZKI: When they changed the rules—no more hand-checking, the five-second backdown rule, they allowed zone defense—all that played into Europeans' hands. We know how to play, how to shoot, how to move without the ball.

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO (below, Bucks forward, Greece): International players are just basketball players. But there's a lot of good players overseas. And they're going to keep coming over here.

THE CROSSOVER

To read all of Parts 2 through 6 of Andrew Sharp's oral history of international basketball, go to SI.COM/NBA