Sabonis was a monster that year.
"Sarunas Marciulionis scrambled to put the team together, largely helped by Donnie Nelson, then an assistant for Golden State and now an executive with the Dallas Mavericks. Nelson located funding for the team after members of the Grateful Dead read an article about its need in the
San Francisco Chronicle. The band’s Rex Foundation supported the team. The Lithuanian members wore tie-dyed warm-ups. Sabonis scored 26 points and pulled down 16 rebounds in the bronze-medal game."
“He would have died on the court, literally,” Nelson said. “I’ve never seen a player play under that type of pressure.”
"After the Lithuanians defeated the Unified team for the bronze -- a victory fraught with meaning since the Unifieds represented, to the Lithuanians, the very Soviet empire against which they had fought for their independence -- the closing ceremonies were still hours away. "That's far too much time for a Lithuanian," Nelson told me, smiling."
"The legend of Sabonis grew after the game. The United States would play Croatia in the gold-medal game eight hours later, allowing for a time gap between the bronze game and the award ceremony. Sabonis and his teammates ventured back to the Olympic dormitory, where Sabonis challenged fellow Olympians in arm wrestling for shots. One by one, wrestlers and shot putters among them, Sabonis beat them. By the time of the award ceremony, three Lithuanians did not make it to the podium. Sabonis was one of them. “I knew how they used to roll,” said Chris Mullin, part of the United States’ Dream Team. “I think they came out with their tie-dye on. They did what the Deadheads do. They got loosened up. Made use of their free time.”
"Sabonis was located a couple of days later in the Russian women’s Olympic dormitory."
