Brown had no connections to the Soviet sporting apparat, nor had he ever spoken to Sabonis. (The coach was occasionally spelling Sabonis’s first name “Arvadis” and referring to him as Latvian rather than Lithuanian.) It was public record that Brown had told his Tigers, “The hell with the Communists!” before a 1977 exhibition against the Soviet national team. He had only four months to get Sabonis to America and cleared by the NCAA. It looked like the most geopolitically improbable recruitment of all time. When people asked Brown what he thought his odds were, he put them at 50-50.

When Tommy Lloyd went abroad in September 2012, he had no other mission than recruiting. The Gonzaga assistant and his boss, Mark Few, knew they’d need a talent infusion in 2014, when forwards Kelly Olynyk and Sam Dower would be gone, and point guard Kevin Pangos and shooting guard Gary Bell Jr. would be seniors. Lloyd, who grew up in a blue-collar Kelso, Wash., family that hosted foreign exchange students, had a brief professional career in Australia and Germany and had backpacked around the world with his wife, Chanelle, the summer before he was hired at Gonzaga, had consistently brought quality internationals to Spokane, including future NBA players Ronny Turiaf (from France) and Elias Harris (Germany). On this trip Lloyd hoped to visit five of the best 1996-born prospects in Europe, especially 6' 10" lefty power forward Domantas Sabonis, the youngest of Ingrida and Arvydas’s three sons, in Málaga, Spain.

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Domantas, whom Arvydas once called “the [basketball] future of my family,” was born in Portland on May 3, 1996, between Games 4 and 5 of the Blazers’ first-round series against the Jazz, a loss in which Arvydas averaged 23.6 points and 10.2 rebounds. The family spent eight seasons in Portland, and when brothers Zygimantas (better known as Ziggy), Tautvydas (Tuti) and Domantas (Domas) hung around the team, oddball forward Rasheed Wallace would address them, respectively, as Sabonis Junior, Sabonis Junior Junior and Sabonis Junior Junior Junior.

Arvydas left the NBA after the 2002–03 season and chose to raise his Juniors—as well as his new daughter, Ausrine—in beachside Málaga rather than his homeland, where he remains its most famous citizen, the giant who led Zalgiris Kaunas to the Soviet Union championships and helped a newly free Lithuania win a bronze medal over the Unified Team at the 1992 Olympics. “He thought,” Tuti says, “that it would be tough for us to grow up in Lithuania with the expectation of being Sabonises.” In 2011–12, Domas played for Unicaja Malaga’s junior team, as well as the Lithuanian under-16 national team, while attending a British-style high school. When Lloyd showed up, he was pleased to discover that Domas is fluent in English as well as Spanish, and reserves his passable Lithuanian mostly for swearing during games, because referees usually can’t understand it.

Lloyd had obtained Domas’ contact information through Arvydas’ agent in Spain, the former Blazers scout Arturo Ortega, who confirmed that Domas was still an amateur. The Zags were the first team to reach him, and he was intrigued. “I’d never thought about college until now,” Domas told Lloyd. “I never knew I was ready to play on that level.”

Having seen footage of Domas’s 15‑point, 27-rebound game against Poland in that summer’s U-16 European Championship, Lloyd was convinced he was chasing an elite prospect. And he had an advocate in then 20-year-old Tuti, who was essentially running the recruitment while Arvydas was serving as president of his native country’s basketball federation and Ingrida was running the family’s resort hotel in Palanga, Lithuania. Tuti passed on the chance to go to the U.S. at 16 and eventually signed a pro deal with Málaga’s second-division team, Clínicas Rincón; he and Domas were living together in a Málaga condo a few minutes’ walk from the Alboran Sea.

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“My biggest regret, and I told Domas this, is never going to college,” says Tuti, who’s ebullient and hypersocial—the opposite of Domas, who, like Arvydas, is introverted. “If you’re not really, really good in Europe, you’ll spend until you’re 22 on the bench.”

Lloyd made two more trips to Spain, and he persuaded Tuti and Domas to take an official visit to Spokane in August 2013. A few other schools got involved in the recruitment, but by then the brothers had a strong rapport with the chipper Zags assistant who showed up everywhere in the same slip-on blue Converse, and who kept in touch with them on the mobile-messaging service WhatsApp—to an extent: They told him they “didn’t need the constant [fawning]” that American recruits expect, so daily texts weren’t necessary. Before they set foot in the States for any visits, the brothers told Lloyd that if Domas came to college, they were 99% sure it would be Gonzaga.

FIBA archives

You couldn’t just go visit the guy in Lithuania. To get involved with Arvydas, Brown figured he had to work the highest channels. He needed an American ally with real influence in the U.S.S.R., and decided that his man was Armand Hammer, the billionaire CEO of Occidental Petroleum and noted philanthropist. Hammer had been doing business in the Soviet Union longer than any other American, and he had the ear of Reagan and Gorbachev to the extent that he had helped persuade the Soviet leader of the worthiness of the Geneva Summit.

The first letter Brown wrote in the Sabonis project was to Hammer, on May 23, 1986, and the flattery was thick. First paragraph: Surely history will recognize you for what you are: a great man. Later: What I am attempting to do on a small scale is not unlike your own monumental work bringing our own nation and the Soviet Nation together. Conclusion: I realize my quest for Sabonis is a dream. Dale Brown lives on dreams. Please help me.

For good measure, on June 6, the coach-slash-dreamer wrote to the other American who had Gorbachev’s ear: Reagan. Brown’s letter formally proposed LSU’s exchange program—If Ping Pong Diplomacy can work, why not basketball?—as well as the Sabonis recruitment, which Brown framed in historic context: I look at Arvadis Sabonis as the Jackie Robinson of international diplomacy.

Brown had this idea that Sabonis would sign the scholarship papers first at the Kremlin and then at the Statue of Liberty.…[But] during a time of tense negotiations over nuclear proliferation, Reagan was unwilling to expend political capital on recruiting for LSU.

Due to the lobbying of some well-connected friends—particularly Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, who had received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984—Brown got replies. Mark Parris, director of the U.S. Office of Soviet Union Affairs, wrote on behalf of Reagan. There was uplifting news: They would assist with the Tigers’ tour of the Soviet Union and the summer youth exchange, calling the latter an example of the kind of activity which the President sought to promote in his meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev in Geneva last year. But the deflating part: During a time of tense negotiations over nuclear proliferation, Reagan was unwilling to expend political capital on recruiting for LSU. We cannot comment on your interest in recruiting Mr. Arvadis Sabonis, Parris wrote, since you will undoubtedly have to take this up directly with Mr. Sabonis and his coach.

Hammer was more promising. He agreed to introduce Brown to Soviet sporting officials in Moscow during the lead-up to the Goodwill Games that June; buoyed by this, Brown booked his trip and wrote his letter to Gorbachev. But when Brown made it to Moscow, he was informed that the then 88-year-old Hammer had taken ill and couldn’t leave the States. Whether Hammer would have truly helped is questionable—it was posthumously revealed that he’d aided Soviet espionage efforts by funneling their money into the U.S., starting in the 1920s—but without him, Brown’s meeting opportunities dried up. “I was,” he says, “pretty much on my own in Russia.”

He was not, however, out of angles. The recruitment just had to go guerrilla. Brown proceeded to Madrid, site of the finals of the FIBA world championships (which was also the basketball portion of the Goodwill Games), where Sabonis would be playing for the U.S.S.R. It was an NCAA-­mandated “dead period,” during which Brown wasn’t allowed to contact recruits, but he got into contact with someone who, he believed, could talk directly to Sabonis.

Rima Janulevicius, then a journalism graduate student at Missouri, had been at her parents’ home in Chicago in June when, she says, Brown called and introduced himself.

“What do you want from me?” she recalls asking.

“I want Sabonis.”

She tried to suppress a laugh. “Seriously? And you think I could deliver this man to you?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“It was me who had the stars in my eyes,” recalls Janulevicius of the hope that Arvydas could come to LSU. “He knew nothing could happen. This was the Soviet Union. You couldn’t do anything. And especially if you were Sabonis. They were watching him at all times.”

Brown cannot recall who told him that—or definitively say how they first got in touch—but Janulevicius was a rare Lithuanian-American who worked in media, and the Lithuanian gossip network in the U.S. was so extensive, she says, that her plans to go to the Goodwill Games on a Knight Foundation grant could have spread. She had met Sabonis after the Soviet team’s exhibition at Indiana in ’82 but had not been in contact with him since.

Still, she says she listened to Brown’s pitch: Would you be willing to ask Sabonis if he’s interested in playing for LSU?

Why would Janulevicius accept such an assignment when the purpose wasn’t entirely journalistic? Her parents fled Lithuania with her sister during World War II and survived a displaced-persons camp in Germany before immigrating to the U.S. Rima was born in New York City in 1957 and moved to Chicago, where a tight-knit community of Lithuanians lived in Marquette Park. During Rima’s childhood, “we were all brought up to save Lithuania,” she says. “That was our mission: Do something or other in order to make sure that Lithuania was free. I know that sounds weird, but that’s exactly how it was.”

You could not save Lithuania on your own, but you could, maybe, save one Lithuanian. You could go to Madrid and then to Ferrol, a northwest coastal town where the Soviets were playing their FIBA group-stage games, and book a room in the same hotel as the team, so you could get past the armed guards at the entrance. You could call Sabonis’s room on the night of July 9, after the U.S.S.R. routed Uruguay 111-62, and persuade him and guard Rimas Kurtinaitis to visit you one floor below. You could arrange to meet Sabonis the following day, in the street, where you could more safely ask him questions. Janulevicius did all of these things. She was resourceful.

Janulevicius asked Sabonis—who had not even known he’d been drafted by the Blazers on June 17, such was the information blackout—if he was interested in playing in the U.S. He said yes. She asked if he was interested in playing for a university. He laughed and said yes.

“And I said, ‘How do we make this happen?’ ” Janulevicius recalls. “And he looked at me like I was Cinderella, and said, ‘I don’t know.’ ” As in: Nice fairy tale, but you cannot make it real. “It was me who had the stars in my eyes,” Janulevicius says. “He knew nothing could happen. This was the Soviet Union. You couldn’t do anything. And especially if you were Sabonis, you couldn’t do anything. They were watching him at all times.”

Janulevicius met briefly with Brown in Madrid, telling him that Sabonis wanted to play in the States and that he’d been informed about LSU. She gave the coach a detailed letter, which mentioned that she’d raised the topic of defecting: He stressed to me that he will not defect (because of family loyalty), that if the condition is that he has to go to Seoul to play, he will do so and then take his chances on being allowed out to play in the pros. . . . Above all, he stresses he wants everything done above board and legally. He fears recrimination against his family and friends, so if it comes down to running or staying behind, he will remain.

Janulevicius made plans to contact Sabonis later in July in Vilnius, where she could get his transcripts for Brown. But when the time came, Sabonis never answered the phone. Janulevicius and Brown had lost his trail.

Arvydas did not come along on Domas’s official recruiting visits in August 2013. “What am I going to do there?” he said to Domas and Tuti. “Go have a vacation.”

Arvydas’s interest in the NBA was irrelevent in the face of the U.S.S.R.’s desire to preserve his amateur status for the Seoul Games.

When they checked in at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Lloyd had their reservations listed under Chomicius. This was partly a joke—Valdemeras Chomicius was Arvydas’ old point guard on the Soviet and Lithuanian national teams—but mostly a way of hiding Domas from would-be poachers. It’s industry knowledge that Gonzaga visitors stay at the Davenport, and one of Lloyd’s earlier European recruiting successes, Polish center Przemek Karnowski, had been phoned there and talked into additional visits by the competition.

The Sabonises’ host in Spokane was, like them, the son of a Hall of Famer: Zags point guard David Stockton, whose father, John, the NBA’s alltime assist leader, told him that Arvydas was a “great passer and great player, even though he could barely move” by the time he reached the NBA at 30. David revealed to the Sabonises (with photo evidence) that one of John’s favorite T-shirts is a faded, lithuania “Skullman” Grateful Dead tie-dye from the 1992 Olympics, which he received as a gift when the Dream Team played Arvydas & Co. in the semifinals.

The Sabonises were taken tubing on the Spokane River, played pickup with some of the Zags and received a pitch from Few and Lloyd that was based on more recent history. Two months earlier the Canadian-born Olynyk had been the No. 13 pick in the NBA draft following an All-America junior season. The 7-footer played a hybrid face-up/post-up power forward role that could similarly suit Domas. “Your game translates to our style,” Lloyd said. “We’re not going to force you to be a five man.”

They felt that Domas’s rebounding ability, at minimum, could earn him starter-level minutes as a freshman. Major-conference schools had joined the pursuit—Domas was also visiting Oregon, Arizona State and Texas A&M, and Duke was making a late push—but Lloyd liked his odds. “If I’ve been out ahead of everybody recruiting over [in Europe], I feel like I can fend those types of schools off,” he says, “because we’re the one school that can say, ‘Look at how many international guys we’ve made our star.’ ”

In the Spanish season that followed his college visits, Domas was promoted to the top division, and at 17 he became the youngest player in Unicaja history to appear in the Euroleague—but he averaged just 9.3 minutes as a boy backing up adults. A move to college, says his 30-year-old Unicaja teammate Nik Caner-Medley, a former All-ACC forward at Maryland, would be “the reverse adjustment from any other recruit. Almost everyone else comes in as the star of their AAU and high school team, and then gets humbled, whereas Domas was grinding here for the few minutes he got.”

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Domas did the dirty work of screening and rebounding during games and was a sparring partner for Unicaja’s starters in practice. The 6’ 8” Caner-Medley loved Domas’s work ethic—he was surprised by how much effort was required to keep the kid off the boards—and insisted that Domas start wearing kneepads because he was delivering too many bruises. The veterans grew to like him—he never played the “I’m a Sabonis” card, and seemed to relish such rookie-hazing rituals as being forced to relinquish all of his choice airplane seats—but when the topic of U.S. colleges came up, Unicaja’s former collegians were adamant that he would benefit from making the jump. “It wasn’t like we had to convince him, though,” Caner-Medley says. “His mind was already made up.”

Arvydas was the one who needed convincing. “He wasn’t keen on the idea of college at first, because Lithuanians have gone over in the past and haven’t had success,” Tuti says. (National-team starter Martynas Pocius languished on the bench at Duke from 2005 to ’09, for example.) “[Arvydas] thought the whole professional level, playing here with men, would make Domas grow more.” But every time Arvydas asked Domas which way he was leaning, he would say, “I want to go to the States.” He thought it was his best route to the NBA, and he wanted the experience Tuti had missed.

Things became less clear-cut when Unicaja offered Domas a three-year contract worth approximately 500,000 euros (around $630,000). The family didn’t need the money, but Arvydas told Domas to read the contract carefully, and asked him, “What about Gonzaga would be better than staying here?”

Arvydas had already given Domas (some of) his height and (some of) his skill, but when decision time came, Arvydas provided something he lacked in the 1980s. “He gave me,” Domas says, “a lot of freedom.”