Today's NBA is loaded with international players, but it wasn’t always that way. What follows is a glimpse into the earliest chapters of the NBA’s global boom: the final years of the Soviet Union, the 1988 Olympics and the experience of one NBA pioneer.
In 1989, the league welcomed a wave of eastern European players led by Vlade Divac from Yugoslavia, Alexander Volkov from Russia, Drazen Petrovic from Croatia, and Sarunas Marciulionis, a 25-year-old shooting guard from Lithuania.
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, Petrovic,Volkov, Kukoc; Sabonis came later—there was a period of time where those guys built the bridge of success.
