Kaunas is a strange city. It's a mix of Art Deco buildings, pretty cobbled streets and strip clubs. In the center of Lithuania's second-largest city, with its 300,000 inhabitants, is Santakos Park. It's a welcoming spot for children to play games and couples to find some tranquility, beneath the gaze of Pope John Paul II's statue. Nearby, on rubber courts, impromptu basketball games are taking place on the first sunny days of May.
Donatas Kosiuba, 35, was sweating profusely. This construction worker, as wiry as a marathon runner, was taking advantage of his lunch break to play one-on-one with a friend. "Basketball is our second religion," he said. Almost everyone plays the sport in this country of 2.8 million people. At the very least, everyone has an opinion on it.
Kosiuba pointed to a building behind him: "This is the museum of basketball history. It was founded by Arvydas Sabonis, our legend." He is Lithuania's most famous man, no doubt about it. Measuring 2.21 meters, in the 1980s he brought glory to his club, Zalgiris Kaunas – the city's flagship institution.
A slam-dunking skeleton
Considered at the time the best player in the world outside the United States, "Sabas" – as he was nicknamed – showcased his talents in Spain and, once Lithuania was liberated from Soviet influence, in the NBA. Even today, posters of him wearing his Portland Trail Blazers jersey adorn the facades of restaurants in Kaunas.
The museum he founded chronicles the saga of local basketball, from its inception in this small Baltic state in 1922, all the way to the national team's European championship win in 2003. There are plenty of trophies and medals on show. However, it's a photograph that stands out.
It shows Sabonis and his teammates laughing, wearing T-shirts in the yellow, green and red of the Lithuanian flag which feature a skeleton slam-dunking the ball. The photo bears the phrase: "Better dead than red." It dates from 1992 and is a memory of an episode that forever links Lithuania to the United States, and to the NBA in particular.
A towering monument
To understand this story, you need to leave Kaunas and drive an hour to the capital, Vilnius. Once there, look for Stars and Legends, a modest bar hidden among the modern skyscrapers of a business district. Regulars find refuge behind its tinted windows to watch sports on TV. Autographed jerseys of former NBA stars are framed alongside basketball posters from the 1990s. The owner met us in his office at the back of the main room.
The mustache of 59-year-old Sarunas Marciulionis has long since gone, but not the mullet haircut that tickled the back of his neck nearly three decades ago. The man is a towering monument at 1.96 meters, and as solid as an oak. His career is even more impressive than his stature. On June 23, 1989, four months before the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, he became the first Soviet to sign a contract with an NBA franchise, the Golden State Warriors of San Francisco.
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