Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part oral history examining the NBA's international takeover. Check back Thursday for the stories of Dirk, Giannis, Kristaps and more.
The 1992 U.S. Dream Team is largely credited with starting a revolution across European basketball. For the NBA, though, the revolution came a few years earlier. In 1989, the league welcomed a wave of eastern European players led by VladeDivac from Yugoslavia, Alexander Volkov from Russia, Drazen Petrovic from Croatia, and Sarunas Marciulionis, a 25-year-old shooting guard from Lithuania.
Marciulionis adopted basketball as a full-time passion midway through his childhood.