A Farewell to Arvydas Sabonis
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http://www.nba.com/blazers/special_features/Portland_will_miss_Arvydas_Sab-
84264-41.html
By Erik Lyslo
Blazers.com Writer
He’s not (my-vydas), he’s not (your-vydas), he’s Arvydas. You might
have heard this line a few times in the last six years, but unfortunately
it’s one line we may never hear again in Portland.
SportsCenter came up with the line, but Portland fans are the one’s who
came to love Arvydas Sabonis over these last six seasons. It’s one of
those times as a fellow Portlander where you just shake your head and say
to yourself, at least I saw him play. That’s the feeling I get when I
know Arvydas Sabonis won’t be returning as a Blazer this season.
You talk about a guy who made his presence known. Obviously that wouldn’t
be hard to do if we were all 7’-3" and 300 pounds, but this guy was more
than just another seven-footer in the NBA. He was a magician in the post
who played the game with a style I’ve never seen from a big man. He was
a point guard in a center's body. And just to be fair to Arvydas, he was
better than most point guards are at distributing the ball.
He really didn’t care about scoring. He took pleasure in setting other
people up and making that perfect eye-opening pass that wooed the crowd
as well as the defense. More times than a few, he’d hit a guy in the face
with an amazing pass that seemingly had no chance at getting through the
defense.
He palmed the ball like it was an orange and he passed the ball like a
quarterback. He was the master of the behind the back bounce pass to a
cutting guard and he even used the between the legs bounce pass a time
or two. All this and he was 7’-3"? You just can’t teach what this guy
did on the floor. That’s what made him so special.
You think about how much better he made the point guards he played with
in Portland. Watching him and Rod Strickland play the two-man game was
incredible. Strickland always said he was the best big man he ever played
with and that included David Robinson, Chris Webber and Kevin Garnett.
He single-handedly helped Kenny Anderson have his best season as a
basketball player in 1997, and when Damon Stoudamire was focused, he
and Sabonis played extremely well together.
Brian Grant loved him like a brother, and despite his displeasure with
a few Lithuanian elbows to the face, Rasheed Wallace was a much better
player with the big man in there. We all watched Sabas and Zach Randolph
blossom into a great one-two punch against Dallas in the playoffs, and
Sabonis was easily the most consistent player in the seven-game series
with the Mavericks. All this, and the man could barely run up and down
the court.
The foot and leg problems were well documented here in Portland, but
nobody around here ever saw the man in his prime. We saw him for what
he was, and that was the big guy who looked like he couldn’t make it
up the court, but the same guy who made the defense look foolish with
a pass that whizzed by their ear. It just goes to show you how smarts
and court savvy will always age better than a guy with no brains and
all athletic ability. The athletic ability will eventually go, but the
brains are always there. We’re talking about a guy who was on a half
leg, but could dominate a half-court game as well as anybody.
I always loved watching Sabonis when P.J. Carlesimo was head coach.
Carlesimo and assistants Rick Carlisle and Dick Harter ran everything
through Sabonis in the high-post to utilize his passing ability. J.R.
Rider and Clifford Robinson had field days in the low post with Sabonis
passing them the ball. In a time where passing into the post is a lost
art, Sabonis mastered it. When Carlesimo left, so did the high-post
offense. Consequently his assist numbers went down, but his rebounding
numbers and his passing ability always stayed the same.
As a former stat wizard with the Blazers, I used to calculate his numbers
based on if he were to play 40 minutes a game. They were always somewhere
around 19 points and 14 rebounds a game along with five or six assists.
The problem is he never played more than 30 minutes a game because of his
legs. But the truth was there. I’m sure any coach would have taken 19
points, 14 rebounds and five assists a game from their center.
Then of course, when you talk of Sabonis, you always play the what-if
game. Remember, the Blazers drafted this guy in 1986. Four or five years
later, he was not only in his prime, he was probably the most dominant
big man in the world. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had retired from Los Angeles,
and the Blazers team that drafted him was in the finals with the Detroit
Pistons. Nothing against Kevin Duckworth, but can you imagine Sabonis
teamed with Clyde, Terry, Buck and Jerome? The stories are infamous.
What a lot of people didn’t know was when Sabonis did come to Portland
for treatment on his legs or feet, he always found his way on the
basketball court with the Rip City crew from the finals. I’ve been told
by numerous people it was a thing of beauty. The outlet passes to Drexler
and Kersey, the pick and rolls with Porter and Danny Young and even Danny
Ainge eventually. They said he could have stepped on the court that day
and they would have won three championships. He was that good.
The man had a sense of humor too. He knew five different languages,
but he pretended like he didn’t know the English language all that
well. The joke was usually on us. He’d give you that look like he
had no idea what you were saying, and then he’d smile and answer
your question in that deep Lithuanian voice. One reporter asked him
after his first year what he thought about the city of Portland. It
had rained about 10 straight days and the sun was nowhere in sight.
Sabonis smiled, looked at the reporter and said, “I leave tomorrow.”
You wouldn’t have guessed the Lakers had just knocked us out of the
playoffs. The media room was all laughter.
These are just some of the things I remember about Arvydas Sabonis.
Where do you start when you talk about all the great plays he made?
I can tell you this; last season wasn’t a season most fans will want
to remember, but ask for a bright spot and Arvydas Sabonis comes up
every time. We watched him because he was flashy. We cheered for him
because he did things that amazed us for a guy his size. He toyed with
players that were much more athletically gifted than he was. We even
saw him get in a couple of shoving matches with Shaquille O’Neal.
Whether it was a classic Sabonis hook-shot off the backboard or a
behind the back pass through a defender's legs, there will never be
another Arvydas Sabonis. I’ll bet anything on that. If you have any
Arvydas memories, I encourage you to email them to me.
elyslo@yahoo.com Have a great week.
Since posting this story, Erik has received a great deal of interest
from fans around the world. He's received emails from Lithuania, Russia,
France and Spain. Newspapers in Lithuania and Spain have all asked to
run his story for the entire country to read and it's already been
posted on Eurobasketball.com. Click here to read some of the great
emails Erik has received on the basketball legend, Arvydas Sabonis.
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