{"id":752754,"date":"2026-06-22T11:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T11:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/752754\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T11:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T11:26:16","slug":"the-end-of-the-nbas-american-empire-how-the-1986-draft-changed-basketball-for-ever-portland-trail-blazers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/752754\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of the NBA\u2019s American empire: how the 1986 draft changed basketball for ever | Portland Trail Blazers"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA commissioner David Stern walked to the podium at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden on 17 June 1986. \u201cFor the last pick of the first round of the NBA draft \u2026 America\u2019s game,\u201d Stern said with a hint of a smile, \u201cthe Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> select Arvydas Sabonis of the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boos rained down from the crowd. TBS hosts Bob Neal and Larry Donald burst into laughter. One Portland journalist said if Sabonis ever played in the NBA<\/a> he\u2019d jump off the Broadway Bridge. (Sabonis had actually been drafted by the Atlanta Hawks the previous year but it was voided because he was not yet 21.) Portland doubled down two rounds later, selecting Dra\u017een Petrovi\u0107 from another communist country, Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

The NBA would never be the same.<\/p>\n

Prior to 1986, international draft picks fell into two categories: foreign-born players who attended college in the US, and late-round flyers. (The draft was set at 10 rounds in 1974, then reduced to seven in 1985.) \u201cAt that time [the mid-1980s], I never saw an NBA scout in that period,\u201d says Dan Peterson, an American coach, who worked in Italy. \u201cEuropeans were not yet on the radar. The NBA had no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

NBA teams didn\u2019t employ international scouts, relying instead on secondhand reports and grainy VHS tapes. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have Synergy [scouting technology] like you do today. You didn\u2019t have real films,\u201d says Rick Sund, former general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. Teams initially turned to part-time scouts in the US or Europe for information.<\/p>\n

Portland\u2019s vice-president of basketball operations, Bucky Buckwalter, had been intrigued by European players for years. When he was an assistant coach at the University of Utah, his teams played exhibition games against European squads. In the NBA, he leaned on his former college teammate, George Fisher, who was coaching in France, for information about European players.<\/p>\n

Buckwalter and Fisher\u2019s conversations centered around Sabonis. Buckwalter first heard about the Lithuanian center during a 12-game exhibition tour of the US by the Soviet Union\u2019s national team in 1982, when they faced college squads. Word spread fast about the 7ft 3in, 17-year-old who outscored the defending two-time National Player of the Year, Ralph Sampson.<\/p>\n

Sabonis possessed a devastating combination of power and finesse. The tallest man on the court ran like a gazelle, passed like Bill Walton and could shoot threes. \u201cYou know, I played against Sabonis basically since I was 16,\u201d NBA All-Star Detlef Schrempf said decades later. \u201cI told everyone all the time that if Sabonis was in the NBA he\u2019d be the best player possibly ever. Guys are \u2018Pff, come on.\u2019 He\u2019d be the best center in the league by far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher also mentioned Petrovi\u0107, a Yugoslavian guard whose virtuoso performances were drawing comparisons to Pete Maravich. \u201cThe Mozart of Basketball\u201d averaged more than 40 points per game in the Yugoslavian league and led Cibona to the European Cup title in 1986, defeating Sabonis\u2019s Zalgiris squad in the finals. During that tournament, he scorched Olimpia Milano with 47 points on 19-of-23 shooting and 25 assists.<\/p>\n

There were impediments to signing international players at the time though. Europeans were discouraged from joining the NBA by the International Basketball Federation\u2019s (Fiba) amateurism requirement. NBA players were deemed professionals and couldn\u2019t represent their country in international competitions, even though athletes who played professionally in Europe were considered amateurs.<\/p>\n

The communist countries exerted additional control. The Soviet Union forbade players from signing abroad, leaving defection as the only option, which jeopardized the freedom and safety of loved ones left behind. Yugoslavia prohibited its players from playing in other countries until they were 28.<\/p>\n

NBA executives were skeptical about whether Europeans could compete in the league and concerned about their ability to assimilate. The commonly held belief was that European players weren\u2019t as tough or skilled as their American counterparts. Executives were reluctant to risk a high draft pick, and possibly their jobs, on European talent.<\/p>\n

The Blazers were mired in mediocrity during the mid-80s and didn\u2019t have a high pick in the 1986 draft. Buckwalter believed Europeans could propel them into contention. \u201cWe picked the best big man and best guard in Europe,\u201d he says of Sabonis and Petrovi\u0107. The question was whether Portland could sign them?<\/p>\n

Sabonis and Petrovi\u0107 faced each other at the Fiba Championship in Madrid weeks after the draft. Sabonis won out as the Soviet Union beat Yugoslavia in an epic comeback overtime victory before losing to the US in the finals. Buckwalter stayed in the same hotel as the players, though approaching Sabonis wasn\u2019t easy. The Lithuanian was being watched. Members of the KGB accompanied athletes when they traveled abroad.<\/p>\n

Dra\u017een Petrovi\u0107 was becoming a force in the NBA before he was killed in a car crash at the age of 28. Photograph: Andrew D Bernstein\/NBAE\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Buckwalter had a Lithuanian friend ask Sabonis to meet him. Sabonis agreed and snuck out of his room in the middle of the night to join Buckwalter in a hotel room at 3am. Buckwalter asked Sabonis if he wanted to come to the NBA. Sabonis said he did, but was unwilling to defect because of the possible ramifications for his family.<\/p>\n

Portland attempted to use owner Larry Weinberg\u2019s connections in the US state department to convince the Soviets to allow Sabonis to join the NBA. A congressman, senator, and two secretaries of state operated as emissaries on the Blazers\u2019 behalf. Portland offered the Soviet bureaucrats millions of dollars to let Sabonis go, to no avail. The Soviets wanted Sabonis to compete in the 1988 Olympics and wouldn\u2019t allow him to lose eligibility by playing in the NBA.<\/p>\n

Buckwalter also met with Petrovi\u0107 in Madrid to gauge his interest in signing with Portland. He was leery about making the jump across the pond, and wasn\u2019t ready to forfeit his international eligibility.<\/p>\n

Buckwalter was undeterred. He hired Kenny Grant, an American coaching in France, to keep tabs on Petrovi\u0107. In the spring of 1988, the Blazers paid for Sabonis to come to Portland to rehabilitate his torn achilles tendon, just in time for him to lead the Soviets past the US in the Olympics that summer before beating Drazen\u2019s Yugoslavia for gold.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the winds of change swept through international basketball. At the urging of Fiba\u2019s secretary general, Borislav Stankovi\u0107, the organization voted in the spring of 1989 to allow professionals to play in international competitions, paving the way for the US Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics. (The US voted against the rule change.)<\/p>\n

The new policy opened the door for five Europeans to sign with NBA teams for the 1989-90 season. Petrovi\u0107 was one of them. After languishing on the Blazers\u2019 bench for a season-and-a-half, Drazen blossomed when he was traded to the New Jersey Nets in January 1991. He averaged 22.3 points per game during the 1992-93 season and was named to the All-NBA Third Team. Sadly, Petrovi\u0107 died in a car crash in Germany in June 1993. He was 28.<\/p>\n

The USSR had also changed since the 1986 draft. Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s glasnost policy opened up society. Soviets played exhibition games against the Atlanta Hawks in the US in 1987, and the Hawks reciprocated with a groundbreaking tour of the Soviet Union the following year. In 1989, the USSR allowed players to leave the country. Buckwalter negotiated with Sabonis\u2019s agent, though the player chose to sign with Valladolid in Spain. He was still working his way back after two achilles tears, and the European schedule, which featured one game a week, was more suitable to his ailing body.<\/p>\n

Sabonis was finally ready for the NBA in 1995 after a successful spell with Real Madrid. The Blazers front office asked team doctor Robert Cook to examine an MRI of Sabonis\u2019s achilles. Cook said Sabonis \u201ccould qualify for a handicapped parking spot right now\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the age of 30, Sabonis was no longer the force he once was. Injuries had reduced his mobility. He averaged 14.5 points and 8.1 rebounds in just 23.8 minutes per game during the 1995-96 season. Extrapolated over 36 minutes, that\u2019s 22 points and 12.2 rebounds, All-Star numbers. Sabonis played seven seasons in Portland. As for the journalist who said he\u2019d jump off the Broadway Bridge if Sabonis ever played in the NBA, the 92-year-old Buckwalter is still waiting.<\/p>\n

Stern, who was named commissioner in 1984, had a vision of globalizing the game, and the NBA began planting seeds around the world by increasing the number of sponsored clinics and camps abroad, exporting VHS tapes like Michael Jordan\u2019s Come Fly With Me<\/a> and airing games on TV in other countries. \u201cThe \u201992 Olympics was like the perfect fertilizer storm,\u201d former NBA executive Terry Lyons says. \u201cYou know that just watered all that and made it grow so much faster.\u201d Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker and Pau Gasol are among the many Europeans who credit the Dream Team with inspiring them to pursue the NBA.<\/p>\n

Europeans trickled into the league in the mid-90s. Croatia\u2019s Toni Kuko\u010d joined the Chicago Bulls in 1993 and became a key member of their second three-peat. Roberto Carmenati, an Italian coach and longtime scout for the Dallas Mavericks, believes Nowitzki represented a turning point. Prior to Nowitzki, who was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in 1998 then immediately traded to Dallas, the Europeans selected by NBA teams had been stars in Europe. Nowitzki, just 20 when he joined the Mavericks, had spent most of his career in the second division in Germany. \u201cHe was as unknown in Europe as he was in America,\u201d Carmenati says.<\/p>\n

Soon after, in the late \u201990s and early 2000s, NBA teams began hiring full-time international scouts in the hopes of unearthing the next great European prospect. Fast forward 25 years, and most teams employ four or five full-time international scouts.<\/p>\n

Sabonis and Petrovi\u0107 are enshrined in the Hall of Fame, though there remains a \u201cwhat if\u201d factor to their careers. Americans never witnessed Sabonis at the height of his powers, and Petrovi\u0107 was at the beginning of his prime when he died. However, there\u2019s no question about their impact on the globalization of the game. They demonstrated that Europeans could not only contribute in the NBA, they could be stars.<\/p>\n

There were fewer than 10 international players in the NBA when Portland drafted Sabonis and Petrovi\u0107 in 1986. Twenty-three were selected in the 2025 draft alone and a similar number will be picked this week. On opening night of the 2025-26 NBA season, 135 international players (more than 25% of the league) from 43 countries were on NBA rosters. The last eight MVP awards went to players born outside the United States.<\/p>\n

Basketball was invented in America, but the game belongs to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner David Stern walked to the podium at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden on 17…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-752754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}