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For a long time, there were NBA-caliber players playing basketball in the Soviet Union. For a long time, NBA teams drafted them and tried to bring them over. But until the late 1980s, nobody ever succeeded. This is the story of the first-ever breakthrough, an all-out battle between one of the most powerful men in America and a player-turned-missionary-turned-scout.
For a long time, there were NBA-caliber players playing basketball in the Soviet Union. For a long time, NBA teams drafted them and tried to bring them over. But until the late 1980s, nobody ever succeeded. This is the story of the first-ever breakthrough, an all-out battle between one of the most powerful men in America and a player-turned-missionary-turned-scout.
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00:00Here is the most important play in the history
00:03of American-Soviet basketball relations.
00:06In the mid-20th century, while the United States
00:09was building a basketball superpower,
00:11the Soviet Union tracked right behind.
00:14And then, at the 1972 Olympic final in Munich,
00:1820-year-old Russian center Alexander Bailov
00:20hit a buzzer-beating layup to give the USSR
00:23a 51-50 win over the United States
00:27and their first gold medal in men's basketball.
00:30The Soviet Sports Federation saw the momentous dethroning
00:34of a bitter rival.
00:36USA basketball saw a travesty and never conceded defeat.
00:40NBA executives saw a third thing.
00:43That boy Bailov could hoop.
00:45Now, no Soviet-born player had ever joined the NBA.
00:49NBA players were still disqualified from Olympic competition,
00:52and it was also the middle of the Cold War.
00:54But in 1975, the New Orleans Jazz drafted Alexander Bailov
01:01161st overall.
01:02Now, an NBA draft pick isn't a contract.
01:05It's just a claim.
01:07The Jazz wanted to sign Bailov and believed he liked them back.
01:11They sent a Ukrainian-American team executive
01:13to the Soviet embassy to make the case.
01:16After some hope, the answer was absolutely not.
01:19The Soviets weren't going to disqualify an Olympic star
01:22for the benefit of an American club.
01:24The Jazz hoped feelings might change after the 76 games,
01:28but it never came to pass.
01:30In 1978, when Bailov was just 26, he died of a rare cancer.
01:35Alexander Bailov would not become the first Soviet player in the NBA,
01:39but someone would.
01:41These guys were clearly NBA material.
01:44Who?
01:45How?
01:46Follow me.
01:59Here we are in the draft cavern.
02:02Every player ever picked in every draft in NBA history.
02:07As always, I invite you to pause and read the waiver,
02:11especially the first part.
02:13Alexander Bailov was from present-day Russia.
02:15Back then, it was the Soviet Union.
02:18They didn't want him in the NBA, so why was he draftable?
02:21NBA draft eligibility has changed over time,
02:24but there are two broad ways to qualify, automatic or voluntary.
02:30Automatic is most traditional.
02:31To oversimplify, the year you finish college and or turn 22,
02:36you are eligible for the draft.
02:39Since the early 1970s, when Spencer Haywood beat the NBA in court,
02:43players can instead voluntarily declare for the draft
02:47if they're above a minimum age.
02:49Once the NBA gave up enforcing a hardship rule for underclassmen,
02:53early entry became a common path to the league,
02:56especially for the best prospects.
02:58Still, automatic eligibility accounts for a handful of draftees each year
03:03and for every 22-year-old-slash-college graduate on Earth who doesn't get picked.
03:10I went undrafted in 2011.
03:12Still a free agent, if anyone wants me.
03:14So, Alexander Bailov didn't choose to enter the 1975 NBA draft.
03:19And honestly, I'm not even sure he was eligible.
03:21Bailov was born in 1951, so I believe he should have been draftable in 1973 and an undrafted free agent
03:30thereafter.
03:31I've asked several experts, and as far as I can tell, the NBA just wasn't strict yet about this.
03:36They were more concerned with minimum age than maximum.
03:39If New Orleans got closer to signing Bailov, maybe the league would have intervened.
03:44I don't know. Stay tuned.
03:46After that failed experiment, nobody bothered to even draft a Soviet player for a while.
03:52Basically, same story for socialist Yugoslavia.
03:55Yorgi Glushkov, who actually signed with Phoenix in 1985, came from Bulgaria,
04:00a smaller Eastern Bloc country with a relatively relaxed sports federation.
04:05And even that was kind of an ordeal.
04:07Still, players behind the Iron Curtain were clearly good enough to help an NBA team.
04:12That could be your NBA team, if only you could persuade the authorities.
04:17If only you had the clout.
04:19The moxie.
04:21If only...
04:35When Ted Turner bought the Atlanta Hawks, he had just been suspended by Major League Baseball
04:40for tampering on behalf of the Atlanta Braves, whom he also owned.
04:44That would not be the last time Turner meddled in Braves affairs,
04:48but Ted promised to be a hands-off NBA owner.
04:51He was just not a basketball guy.
04:53Ted was an Atlanta guy, a publicity guy, a money guy, and above all else,
04:59a television guy.
05:00The Hawks served him on all fronts.
05:03To manage his new possession, Ted Turner hired a veteran basketball executive.
05:09But he didn't last.
05:12So, Turner passed general managing duties over to a season ticket holder, literally.
05:17He got overwhelmed and passed the gig to someone more experienced, who didn't last either.
05:25Nobody wanted to run Ted's Hawks the way Ted liked.
05:28So Ted said, fine, let the kid do it.
05:31The kid was Stan Kasten.
05:33In 1976, Stan Kasten graduated law school with a job offer from a fancy law firm.
05:39To celebrate, he took a road trip visiting baseball stadiums.
05:43One day at Bush Stadium in St. Louis, Stan ran into Ted Turner.
05:48One thing led to another.
05:50Stan bailed on the law firm to draw up contracts for Ted's teams, learning on the job how they operate.
05:56And in 1980, the buck passed to 28-year-old Stan Kasten.
06:02Stan's off-chance meeting with Ted Turner grew into a legendary career in sports.
06:09But we're here for this part.
06:12Back in 1970, Hawks GM Marty Blake made minor history by drafting, although never signing,
06:18two foreign-born players direct from the Italian league.
06:21Neither had ever played college ball in the U.S.
06:25In the mid-'80s, Kasten's Hawks turned their attention back overseas because Stan had found a loophole.
06:32Today, we would call this draft and stash.
06:35Leaning on Blake's resources and those of internal scout Richard Kaner,
06:40Atlanta used late picks in four straight drafts to acquire rights to players from numerous countries,
06:46including the USSR, which had gone untouched since 75.
06:51Atlanta believed they had a private tunnel under the Iron Curtain.
06:55Ted Turner.
06:56Ted did deals in Moscow.
06:58Ted knew Mikhail Gorbachev personally.
07:01When the U.S. and USSR boycotted each other's Olympics,
07:04Ted paid to bring both federations to his own mini-Olympics.
07:09He was doing his best to thaw the Cold War.
07:12If anyone could convince the Russians to let a player join the NBA, it was Ted Turner.
07:18Now, I just said Russians and Moscow was indeed running things,
07:22but remember that several other presently independent nations were once part of the Soviet Union.
07:28And yes, I'm making the Soviet Union green, not red.
07:31There's no rule that says it has to be red.
07:33I can do whatever I want.
07:34I can make Spain turtles.
07:37The USSR's best player in the 80s was Arvidas Sabonis, a bear-like, balletic center, inventive
07:44passer, charismatic, unmistakably talented enough to star in the NBA.
07:50Even if Americans didn't know the difference, Sabonis was not Russian.
07:55His native Lithuania was an occupied Soviet constituent state,
07:59a repressed people on the verge of revolution.
08:02Lithuania's vaunted basketball federation had long since been subsumed by that of the USSR.
08:08We're not going to go too deep on that topic, so I highly recommend this documentary.
08:13In league play, Sabonis starred for his hometown club, Zalgiris.
08:18He led them to a 1985 title against the Soviet army team, and you can tell that was special for
08:24him.
08:25In international competition, Sabonis had to wear red.
08:29Sabonis won MVP leading the USSR to the 1985 Eurobasket championship.
08:34That was cool too.
08:36Days later, Arvidas Sabonis was the 77th overall pick in the 1985 NBA draft.
08:43By the Atlanta Hawks, of course.
08:45Stan Kasten knew that signing Sabonis would be a long shot, even with Ted's help.
08:50But still, why not?
08:52The answer to Stan's question was on Sabonis' birth certificate.
08:56December 19th, 1964.
08:59Sabonis would not turn 22 until 1986.
09:02He was not eligible in 85.
09:05The NBA voided the Hawks pick.
09:09The rest of the Sabonis saga is a tale for another time, but a lot happened in 86.
09:15And the Hawks blew their chance to draft him legally.
09:18They tried to trade up, but the Portland Trailblazers got Sabonis with just the 24th pick in the 1986 draft.
09:25With Sabonis off the board, the Hawks claimed two other Soviets in 86.
09:30They had new hope.
09:31Word was that after the 1988 Olympics, the IOC would allow NBA players to join their national teams.
09:38The Soviet Federation might soften.
09:40And these two were actual draft-eligible 22-year-olds.
09:45So was he, but nobody bothered to pick him.
09:48Nobody in the NBA thought much of him in 1986.
09:51Well, maybe one guy did.
09:55Don Nelson was born in 1962 in Iowa City.
10:00That's Don with two N's.
10:03We're just going to call him Donny like everyone else does.
10:06Sarunis Martialonis was born in 1964 in Kaunas, Lithuania, USSR.
10:13Donny's family moved around because his father, Don with one N, got drafted out of Iowa in 62
10:19and played on three NBA teams until 1976 when he retired to begin his coaching career in Milwaukee.
10:27Sarunis' parents were not basketball players.
10:30Young Sarunis was a talented, but not all that serious tennis prodigy.
10:34A lefty who refused to hit a backhand.
10:36That pursuit was interrupted by a terrifying accident at age 13 when he was messing around with homemade explosives.
10:44Donny was pursuing a D1 basketball scholarship until 1982 when his father abruptly left the family.
10:52Donny chose to instead attend college close to his mother, Sharon.
10:57Sarunis took up basketball as a teenager and grew to 6'5 with enormous hands.
11:02But he attended Vilnius University to focus on journalism.
11:06He played only occasionally for his college team.
11:10Donny played all four years at Wheaton College, but understood he was not NBA material.
11:16Sarunis showed enough talent as a late-blooming hooper to get opportunities with a middling Lithuanian club
11:22and with the Soviet national junior team.
11:26At his mother, Sharon's urging, Donny spent summers playing for Athletes in Action,
11:31a traveling Christian sports ministry.
11:34AIA scheduled exhibitions against club, college, and national teams the world over, often beating them.
11:41In 1985, the summer before Donny's senior year, AIA visited Vilnius, where Donny got cooked by a powerful lefty guard.
11:50They met again for a Soviets vs. AIA rematch in California.
11:55Though Donny and Sarunis didn't speak the same language, they bonded over competition.
12:01Enough that in 1987, when a stranger approached Sarunis pleading for help,
12:06Sarunis contacted his friend in the U.S.
12:09Donny obliged and also determined he had more business with Sarunis Martialonis.
12:15Since college, Donny had dipped into NBA scouting, most recently for the Golden State Warriors.
12:21Meanwhile, Sarunis had blossomed.
12:23He got a belated shot with the Soviet senior team and led them in scoring at Eurobasket 1987.
12:31That same June, Don Nelson, the father, became a Warriors executive.
12:36Don and Donny, once distant, were now co-workers with the 87 NBA draft weeks away.
12:43The scout-slash-son caught his boss-slash-father up to speed on this thrilling prospect.
12:50The Warriors weren't gonna burn a tippy-top draft pick on a kid they'd have to wrestle away from the
12:55Soviets,
12:56even with rule changes in the air, but through five rounds, Martialonis remained unpicked.
13:02Donny met Sarunis because of basketball.
13:05They reconnected to save a child's life, only to realize how much more basketball they had to offer one another.
13:12Donny believed Sarunis could be a gem in his scouting resume.
13:16Sarunis believed Donny could be his ticket out of the Soviet Union.
13:20June 22, 1987 would be the dawn of a new chapter in an unlikely friendship and a new era in
13:28NBA history.
13:28With the 127th pick in the 1987 NBA draft, the Golden State Warriors selected.
13:39They should have known.
13:41The Warriors should have noticed that the Soviet-friendly, draft-and-stash-obsessed Hawks showed no interest in picking Sarunis.
13:49The Hawks knew something.
13:51On June 13, Sarunis Martialonis had turned 23.
13:55He was no longer draft eligible.
13:58We know the league was once kind of lax about that stuff, but Stan Kasten had just gotten burned
14:04trying to draft a brilliant Lithuanian who was too young to be eligible.
14:08He was not going to let someone get away with drafting a brilliant Lithuanian who was too old.
14:14Stan snitched.
14:16The NBA voided the pick.
14:18Sarunis Martialonis, who technically went undrafted in 1986, was a free agent.
14:23But, like, was he really?
14:26The Soviets promised to let guys join the NBA if they won gold at the 88 Olympics.
14:31The Hawks had Ted Turner's connections and the rights to two of Sarunis' national teammates.
14:38Martialonis to Atlanta, however you want to spell that, looked like a done deal.
14:43And it was.
14:45Ted and company did everything to woo Moscow.
14:48They invited Soviet players to visit Atlanta.
14:50They sent Hawks players to visit the USSR.
14:54TBS aired a bespoke international exhibition tournament.
14:58Yes, that's Mike D'Antoni.
15:00Turner executives facilitated Arvidas Sabonis' medical care, even though the Hawks didn't have his rights.
15:06They arranged for a Lithuanian legend to participate in the NBA three-point contest.
15:12At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, where the Soviet men did indeed win gold,
15:17the Hawks presented Sarunis Martialonis with an NBA contract.
15:21He signed it.
15:22And the Federation just changed their minds.
15:26Nope.
15:27The Hawks tore up the contract, fearing punishment for Sarunis or Ted.
15:32They would just have to keep trying.
15:34The Hawks believed they were alone in this pursuit, but they were not.
15:39All the while, Donny Nelson had been lurking.
15:46When the Hawks came to Seoul, so did Donny.
15:49And after the Atlanta signing fell through,
15:52Donny spent much of 1989 sleeping on Sarunis' couch and volunteering around Vilnius.
15:58He was being a pal, but also, obviously, recruiting.
16:02Promising more money.
16:04Promising more minutes.
16:05Neither side lacked persistence.
16:08But in the end, the difference was the audience for that persistence.
16:12Unlike Atlanta, Donny and the Warriors had no relationships to preserve with the Soviets.
16:17They played the Lithuanian angle.
16:19On June 20th, 1989, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov staged a press conference in Moscow with several Soviet athletes and
16:29Donny.
16:30It was a grand challenge to the Soviet sports agency.
16:34For Nelson, it was an opportunity to say,
16:37The Warriors will sign Sarunas. He will come play for us. You do not have grounds to stop him.
16:44And that's how it went.
16:46Sarunas Martialonis was a pioneer.
16:49Thrust all at once into not just American basketball, but American culture.
16:56Halloween. Supermarkets.
16:57Thankfully, Sarunas was ready, or at least he got ready fast enough.
17:02His slashing style fit right in.
17:05This was his signature move, using those big paws to go behind the back at full speed and finish lefty.
17:10It just worked at the NBA level.
17:12Off the court, Sarunas had his family, a translator, and of course, his friend Donny.
17:18He even got to play against other Eastern Europeans.
17:22Jack McCallum dubbed them the Green Card Five.
17:25Two Soviets, three Yugoslavians.
17:28All of them debuted in that 89-90 season.
17:31Separate from the Soviet affair, Drazen Petrovic of Croatia had already defied Yugoslavian rules to go play in Spain.
17:39In 89, he finally reported to the Portland Trailblazers, who held his draft rights.
17:44One can only imagine the majesty of a Petrovic-Sabonis pairing, because the big Lithuanian didn't come over until 1995.
17:53Petrovic became the star of this bunch, named to an all-NBA team before his sudden, tragic death in the
18:01summer of 1993.
18:03Drazen's friend, Vlade Divac, was a Lakers' first-round pick in 1989, and he remained a fixture of basketball in
18:11Serbia and the NBA thereafter.
18:13Here is another great 30 for 30 if you want to know more of the Yugoslavian story.
18:18Serbia's Djarko Paspai was undrafted, but he connected with Greg Popovich and played that season in San Antonio.
18:25And he also uttered one of the most lyrical quotes I have ever read.
18:29And then there's the Hawks.
18:32Stan Kasten finally signed someone.
18:35Martial Onis' Soviet co-star.
18:37Alexander Volkov of Ukraine didn't have a long NBA career, but he had one.
18:42By waiting, working, politicking, and then waiting some more, the NBA had punctured the Iron Curtain.
18:50A pipeline to the superior Eastern European talent pool was now open.
18:56Ironically, right before the dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia into numerous independent nations and basketball teams.
19:04Arvidas and Sarunas both got to wear green in the 92 Olympics.
19:08You know what else is ironic?
19:10In the 1990s, with the basketball world much freer and more open than before,
19:15the Hawks kind of lost interest in drafting players from overseas.
19:18Donnie Nelson, however, did not lose interest.
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