Welcome back
to this eighth Olympic meeting
between the USA and USSR.
Last time they played
was 16 years ago in Munich.
The only time the American team
has ever lost an Olympic basketball game.
The Soviet Union, that was the team
we wanted to play and beat the worst.
They had size, they had height...
7'4" Sabonis.
They were menacing.
In those old days, if you were willing
to paint the world in a cartoon,
and we always were,
the Soviets were the grim,
unsmiling, unfeeling,
cheating...
The "other. " The other guys.
I remember the backdrop
of the Cuban missile crisis
and all those things.
The ultimate war was always going to
be with the Soviet Union.
What a rejection by Robinson.
As he says "No, no,"
"Nyet, nyet" to Marciulionis.
The perception of Russian athletes
was that they trained harder
than anyone else in the world.
How we viewed them,
that's just what they were born to do.
They were trained since they could walk,
probably, to play basketball.
I must break you.
Right into Volkov, who takes it away.
John Thompson said that
the old Lenin prophecy was coming true.
The U.S. Is not playing well.
"The capitalists will sell us the rope
with which we'll hang them. "
It's a 2-on-1 break.
Marciulionis!
And that will do it for the Soviets.
The United States goes home stunned.
USSR.
Imagine having to compete
for another country
at the prime of their life
when they have everything going for them,
and knowing full well that since 1940
the Russians have occupied and oppressed
and just destroyed every bit of hope
that an entire country, their homeland,
had ever even thought about.
The dream of freedom.
The dream of independence.
The dream of being able
to chart your own destiny
and make your own choice tomorrow,
yeah, that was the bigger dream.
It was about a 20-year period,
the '20s and '30s,
where the country had its independence.
And in two of those years, in the late '30s,
they actually won as Lithuania.
As an independent state, they actually won
European basketball titles.
There was a guy, a Lithuanian-American
guy named Frank Lubin
who lived in LA, who came back to Lithuania
to help them win those titles.
Those European championships
in the late '30s.
And to this day in Lithuania,
if you're talking about a leviathan,
people will refer to a "Lubinas. "
That's how much
in the Lithuanian imagination
this guy remains to this day.
Almost every kid
was just trying, how to get into the team.
How to play it.
Now basketball is still today number one
and I believe it's going
to stay for a long time.
An iron curtain has descended
across the continent.
Lithuania and the Baltic states in general
were the ultimate chess piece
played between
the two greatest totalitarian
forces the world has ever known,
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
I was 17 years of age
when I was... When I left Lithuania.
There was a mass retreat.
People or whoever could,
ran away by all kinds of means.
Walking, using the trains.
It was a massive, massive chaos.
The amount of deportation
and gratuitous punishment
and torture meted out,
especially during the Stalinist era,
boggles the mind.
An amazing teenage athlete.
A guy who ran and jumped
in a way that shouldn't
be possible for someone that size.
He was a 7'3" version of Larry Bird.
He could do everything.
He could run, he could jump,
he could rebound,
he could block shots, he could pass,
he could think, he could lead the team.
Sarunas' story
is nothing short of miraculous.
He left home at an early age,
seeking his basketball dream.
He went from Kaunas to Vilnius
with basically,
his mom and dad gave him
a bag full of apples.
The difference in the lives
of Eastern European athletes at that time
and the lives of Western athletes
in the same sports...
Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes.
You sure it's not the shoes?
...were graphic.
The kind of social circumstance
in which somebody like
Sarunas Marciulionis grew up,
we can't really fathom it
in the United States.
You're talking about breadlines.
You're talking about people competing
shoulder to shoulder for a potato.
You know there's a 10-year delay
in the Soviet Union
of delivery of an automobile.
This man, he laid down
his money, and then the fella,
he was, that was in charge said to him,
"Okay, come back in 10 years
and get your car. "
And he said, "Morning or afternoon?"
And the fella behind the counter said,
"Well, 10 years from now,
what difference does it make?"
And he said, "Well, the plumber's coming
in the morning. "
Lmagine how difficult it was
for Sarunas Marciulionis
when he had to stand up there
and read a speech
that somebody else had written for him.
A speech that contained lies, mistruths,
and just absolute nonsense.
They didn't have the freedoms.
They did have to say often
where they were going out.
They had bed checks.
They were watched, obviously.
Americans love a winner.
And the survival of the fittest.
Lithuania is an example of what happens
when a small country
is caught between big powers.
It is a lesson on how people struggle
to preserve their national identity,
their culture and language.
That has been Lithuania's history
and it appears to be its destiny.
A popular tradition today is basketball.
It is sport number one in Lithuania.
And when a local team
plays visiting Russians,
the rivalry takes on a special edge.
The Red Army team,
right there in the name, it's all there.
I mean, it's the army of the Soviet Union
based in Moscow,
which had essentially annexed Lithuania.
And the name "Zalgiris" refers
to the great knights of the old Lithuania.
I remember before final games
some generals from army,
they come to meeting and said...
This was not only their pride,
that was the open war.
We are not going to accept,
no way, no time ever
the occupation of Lithuania
and we are fighting the enemy.
Not in a field with explosives,
bombs, machine guns, or planes,
but we are fighting them
on a basketball court.
For the first pick in the 1986 NBA draft,
the Cleveland Cavaliers
select Brad Daugherty
of the University of North Carolina.
Chuck Person of Auburn.
John Salley of Georgia Tech.
For the last pick
- of the first round...
- Hurry up!
...of the NBA draft,
America's game,
the Portland Trail Blazers
select Arvydas Sabonis of the Soviet Union.
That's gonna be an interesting selection.
Good night, nurse.
Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.
Well, I can't spell it and
I can't pronounce it.
The thing that
I'd like to talk about is that Sabonis.
Because this guy right now
is one of the top three
or four centers in the world.
What about getting him out?
That is a problem.
We are talking
to some people who are talking to people.
There's been nothing really very strong.
I suspect it will have to be
on the political level,
on the diplomatic level
before anything ever would take place.
Tommy Sheppard with the Wizards.
We'll see you at 3:00 today.
- Okay.
- Bring your A-game.
I said bring your A-game.
Jonas is a little bit of a
mystery in this draft.
Talent-wise, I think he could end up
being the best player in this draft.
What time he comes to the NBA,
and when that talent begins to blossom,
that's up for debate.
Exciting time for you, man.
You're only a rookie one time.
You only get drafted one time.
Might as well enjoy it.
My father played basketball
when he was young,
- but my father is rower.
- Yeah?
- Rower.
- A rower?
- Oh, really?
- My father told me,
"If you choose rower,
you will be good rower. "
- It's easy, right?
- Yeah. He told me, "Come on. "
The camp can be pretty intimidating
because these guys know that their future
depends on what the people
in the room think.
The dollar amount between
being the second pick in the draft
and the 20th is millions of dollars.
So there's a lot at stake.
There's question marks
about how ready he is
and we're never gonna know for sure.
He's a risk.
Going into the Olympics,
we were feeling pretty good.
We practiced hard,
we were well-conditioned,
well-trained to get out there and play.
We were definitely confident.
We felt that we had a good team.
We never played against Sabonis,
but we'd heard about this guy
so long that he should have
been over into the NBA.
But I guess they wouldn't let him come.
And now let's take a look
at the starting lineups.
They built this Russian team
to actually compete with the NBA,
to compete with
all of the best players in the league.
So they were fighting for something and
we were fighting for something.
In my mind's eye,
I see kind of the middle of the floor.
I see the ball sailing over the midcourt
and Kurtinaitis getting it
and stopping and popping.
He can shoot. I told you, folks.
He can shoot.
The Soviet Union played
a much more appealing game of basketball.
They were the ones that were up and down.
They were the ones
that were controlling the tempo.
They were the ones
that were passing that ball
and hitting the open shots.
Sabonis was the catalyst,
just tossing the ball,
then knocking down jumpers.
And every time it seemed like we got close,
they'd make a big play
and we just couldn't get over the hump.
Five minutes to go
and Marciulionis drops at the other end.
You could tell that they
had it in their eyes
that they were ready to play and they felt
that they could play with us.
And here's the frosting for the USSR.
They win it 82-76.
There's no reason to make any excuses.
They just outplayed us
and they were the better team.
Glasnost means "openness. "
It also means "something
spoken publically" rather than whispered.
Both meanings symbolize
the changes that are now
sweeping Soviet life.
There is the feeling Soviet sports officials
are close to allowing some of their great
athletes to play in America.
It is not something
those officials want to do,
but in this clash
of capitalism and socialism,
money is proving to be the big lure.
My first trip over there
was on an Athletes In Action tour.
I happened to get matched up
against this 6'5" bull
named Sarunas Marciulionis.
And he lit me up for about 40 that night.
So, later on, when I got into scouting,
I say, "Dad, there's a two guard
that's pretty good over there.
"We should try to extract. "
There were two teams vying for him.
And it was the Atlanta Hawks
and the Golden State Warriors.
And I think Don Sr. And Don Jr.
Were very smart.
They went via the Lithuanian angle.
"Lithuania should be independent.
"We respect that, come over. "
I was working on the Hawks' side.
It was different because in our relationship
that my boss Ted Turner had,
not only with the Soviet Olympic Committee,
but really dealt with the very highest
levels of the Soviet government,
we weren't in a position to do that.
Basically a free agent signing
just like you would
any American player or European player.
The difference was
he was behind the Iron Curtain.
They just told us,
"You can't have a conversation
"inside Sarunas' apartment
because it's bugged. "
So never did we ever talk about anything
inside the apartment.
After a while he told me, he opened up,
he said, "By me walking
around with you in public,
"a westerner, an American,
"people associate that with money
"and I'm putting myself in danger. "
Exposure to western lifestyle
is what Soviet sports bosses worry about.
They have watched
the enormously popular Garry Kasparov,
World Chess Champion,
thumb his nose at the sports establishment.
I used all opportunities
given by the glasnost
and perestroika for my fight.
Kasparov comes and goes as he wants.
One of the only Soviets who can.
Other sporting chiefs will be very slow
to allow their athletes his kind of freedom.
We were with Garry Kasparov
the night before Sarunas was going to
basically take on the establishment.
Sarunas knew the odds
and he was doing something
that could cost him his career.
And Garry said right there to his
face, he said,
"Sarunas, tomorrow you're gonna be one
of the richest men in our country,
"free to pursue your professional dream,
"or you're gonna be in Siberia. "
I remember walking in,
I guess it would have been
the Sports Ministry in Vilnius,
and I never saw Sarunas
so nervous in my life.
The five Americans sat
at one side of the table,
and there must have been
15-20 Lithuanians representing
all different parts of
Lithuanian government,
the Sports Ministry,
all the teams they played on.
All there really to say,
"What part of this do I get
if Sarunas goes to the NBA?"
I just remember seeing him,
he never looked up,
he looked down at the floor the whole time.
When we walked out,
he kind of grabbed my arm and he said,
"Wouldn't it be nice, this is my life,
if I could make the decision.
"But you see where I am?"
I'll never, ever, ever forget that.
Sarunas rolled the dice.
He basically read the tea leaves and said,
"The country's falling apart right now.
"If I act as an individual
and sign my own deal,
"kicking back nothing to the Soviet sports
machine that helped train me,
"but sign my own deal with Golden State,
"I'm gonna gamble that
they're not gonna come in and void it
"or put me in prison
or do anything to keep it from happening. "
And sure enough, he read it right.
The Golden State Warriors
of the National Basketball Association
today signed Sarunas Marciulionis
of the Soviet Union
to a three-year contract.
Marciulionis, the leading scorer
for his Olympic Gold Medal winning team,
is the first Soviet to sign with the NBA.
All of a sudden I heard that Sarunas would
be coming to the Golden State Warriors.
I mean, this guy
just beat us in the Olympics,
still was some bad blood there. No doubt.
But I knew that he can play,
he could help our team.
I think that when he first got here,
"You mean that I can buy that car right now
and I don't have to wait in line?"
When he first went to shop in Safeway...
that there was no rations
on the vegetables and the fruits,
and he started crying.
You know, little by little,
you started reading
or hearing stories about
where he was coming from,
what he was coming from.
In 1989 when Sarunas came to the Warriors,
my perception of a European player
was pretty much a spot-up shooter,
strictly role player, not very creative.
Sarunas broke that impression
by being an all-around player.
More of a scorer than a shooter.
I think to this day,
I mean, I haven't played with a player
physically as strong as him at any position.
Suddenly, one morning
I am picking up Chicago Tribune
and look at the sports section
and here I read a man,
an NBA player,
"Russian, Sarunas Marciulionis,"
played so and so.
That definitely...
My high pressure jumped immediately.
When Sarunas came here,
I used to say to people, "Read the
sports pages, you'll learn a lot. "
Everyone thought, "Oh, he's Russian. "
He says, "I'm not Russian, I'm Lithuanian.
"I don't want to answer your questions
in Russian. Talk to me in Lithuanian. "
I mean, it was, it was just interesting.
So the sports became a barometer
for how people were thinking,
what was happening.
Mikhail Gorbachev starts to give signals
that it was all right for there to be
a degree of regional autonomy.
He had to widen the area of freedoms.
When Gorbachev
started with his perestroika,
I knew that this is the beginning.
This is the will of our people,
to be an independent nation.
Lithuania's push toward freedom,
toward independence
was in its way as essential
as the push against the Berlin Wall
and the fracturing of that wall.
The independence flag
is flying all over Lithuania.
Good evening.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Lithuania,
tonight they continue
their high-stakes poker game,
each trying to decide
if the other is bluffing.
The TVannouncer was saying
the Russians are surrounding
the TVstation and TVbuilding.
They showed the Russian soldiers
go in through
all the corridors and everything else.
Then all of a sudden, boom, and that was it.
The deadly crackdown brought forth images
of Beijing's Tiananmen or Prague '68
in its swiftness and disregard
for civilian lives.
Well, I've been following the situation
in Lithuania
and the other Baltic states closely.
The turn of events there
is deeply disturbing.
I think we should recognize Lithuania
and recognize it now.
We were glued to the television in Chicago.
Getting some information by phone
from Chicago relatives and friends.
Whatever it was needed.
I mean, push that button,
tell them, scream about this.
Landsbergis was possessed
of gigantic balls of brass.
And he played them musically
and well and loudly.
There's always this hangover phenomenon
after the great breakthrough.
You have your great narrative
of finally wriggling free and then,
okay, now what?
All of a sudden Lithuania is sitting there
with their independence
and it's a nation that's
completely bankrupt.
Sarunas asked me to become involved
with the basketball team.
Sarunas and I ended up going on these little
nickel-and-dime speeches
all over the Bay Area.
And we would show up to anybody's house
for a hundred,
a couple hundred bucks a whack
and send it back to Lithuania.
Well, one of the local beat writers,
George Shirk,
wrote a little story on our plight.
And that story was read
by some of the members
of the Grateful Dead.
And that's how that whole thing started.
The Grateful Dead were big basketball fans.
Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart,
Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh.
They're sitting around saying, "We can't
just let our friends down like this. "
I think his eyes just got big.
Might even be a contact high going on.
If you breathed in that room,
you were gonna get a little buzz.
No, I can't shoot. I can do anything else.
I can get in position, but I cannot shoot.
I can rebound.
We sit down and Jerry sits there,
and he, you know, lights up
what looked like a cigar.
It's hard to function in that environment,
to be honest with you.
I'm just trying to think straight, right?
He's like, "What you guys did in Lithuania
was inspirational
"and we're all about
freedom and celebration
"and that's what you guys are all about. "
Basically, "We want to help you guys. "
They had no money. They were broke.
They were kind of nurturing this
unauthorized farm team.
We said, "Why don't we fund them?"
So they cut us a big check
and they sent to Lithuania
a box of tie-dyed T-shirts
with Lithuanian colors.
Freedom. Let's go. Let's dance.
Let's have a great time
and let's make threes in transition.
It was basically just screaming loudly,
"Here we are. "
This was like the phoenix
coming out of the ashes.
The Lithuanian team rising from nothing
and just reaching,
it's like I felt this reaching,
reaching up over the obstacles
and just slam-dunking that basketball.
The only souvenir
worth having in Barcelona
was a Grateful Dead shirt, jacket, jersey.
Whatever you could get with
the Lithuania/Grateful Dead logo,
that was the thing to have.
These guys, I'm telling you,
they wear these things everywhere.
To press conferences, to shoot-around,
to everywhere we travel,
we kind of get known as "Team Tie-dye. "
"The Grateful Dead Freedom Team. "
You can feel this wave
of really cool optimism.
Like you're involved with something
that's bigger than just sports.
It's bigger than just rock 'n' roll.
It's bigger than just
the political side of things.
So that's the way we entered the Olympics.
When we left Seoul following the
closing ceremony of the 1988 games,
we could not possibly have imagined
how very different a set of circumstances
would greet us here in Barcelona.
The 1992 opening ceremony at Barcelona
is to me one of the cosmic turning points
of the 20th century.
A dramatic moment, Dick.
The entrance of the Unified team.
No more red uniforms.
No more hammer and sickle,
which was almost a crest
of athletic royalty.
All over the infield
as the Parade of Nations coalesced
were graphic signs of a world
that would never again be the same.
Basketball at Barcelona
was all about "The Dream Team. "
It wasn't about anything
other than "The Dream Team. "
Our "Dream Team" was glamorous.
If you in your mind
had a dream summer vacation,
that's what this was.
And mix in a little basketball
with the greatest players in the world.
If you were one of those
rare Americans in 1992
who was in some way put off
by the whole "Dream Team" ethic,
then it was an easy choice
who you were gonna root for
because there was this
other team with a very hip,
very sort of counterculture
American connection.
And you're rooting for the Grateful Dead.
You can't beat that.
We won in the quarterfinals against Brazil
and we qualified for semifinals.
And that's where we're gonna face
"Dream Team. "
We're being blown out
by these incredible athletes.
You know, I'm just like a little kid.
I'm like, "There's nobody
taking pictures, actually. "
Well, he's got the best position
in the house.
So I just start taking pictures
of the actual game.
By the way, none of those pictures
came out well.
And we beat them. We beat Lithuania
and everybody was surprised.
They were really, in a lot of respects,
trying to launch themselves back
into the European community.
Springboard themselves
back into respectability,
and they were using the only tool they had,
basketball, to do that.
Their final game against Russia
was to live or die.
That's the feeling.
But...
You can imagine
the moment of victory,
how every one of us felt.
It was the proudest moment
in our athletic history.
That bronze medal was for us like gold.
Not only for us, but it was for our country.
Our U. S. "Dream Team"
came to be known as how good it was,
but in Lithuania
it was a different kind of dream.
It was very much a dream team
that fulfilled the dream of a nation.
In walks President Landsbergis,
who was the guy that was sitting in
front of those Russian tanks.
In the locker room, it was winning
the NBA Championship times five.
Sarunas shows up and he says,
"The Grateful Dead believed
in us when we were nobody
"and we're gonna pay a tribute to them. "
And here comes this Lithuanian crew
just off the side door here,
just kind of parading in.
It looked like they came
from a Grateful Dead concert.
Not in a straight line
and just totally free.
The rock 'n' roll Grateful Dead team
and they're wearing
tie-dye on the medal stand.
It was one of the few priceless moments
in sporting rock 'n' roll history.
They could have been laughed at
if they weren't as good as they were.
They would have looked like
fools wearing tie-dye,
but we had a championship golden team
flying their colors.
The dream of freedom.
The dream of independence.
The dream of being liberated
from social and political domination.
The dream of being able
to chart your own destiny
and make your own choice tomorrow.
Something we take for granted.
Yeah, that was a bigger dream.
With the fifth pick
in the 2011 NBA draft,
the Toronto Raptors select
Jonas Valanciunas
from Utena, Lithuania.