From: terry@garfield.Stanford.EDU (Terry Wong)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.pro,rec.sport.basketball,rec.sport.basketball.misc,ba.sports.,ba.market.misc
Subject: Lithuania team T-shirts, etc.
Keywords: Lithuania, Grateful Dead, T-shirts, Warriors
Date: 18 Aug 92 01:41:10 GMT
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA

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Get a Lithuanian Olympic T-shirt

Summary of article:
Donnie Nelson's thoughts on Olympics
Donnie Nelson's thoughts on Warriors
How to get your own Lithuanian Olympic T-shirt ( corrects newspaper info!!!)
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I just heard Ralph Barbieri's interview with Donnie Nelson on KNBR radio.
Donnie Nelson is the son of Warrior's head coach, Don Nelson, and is
an assistant coach on the team.  He also happened to be an assistant on the
Lithuanian Olympic basketball team.  He had a few interesting tidbits
to pass on, and some info on how to get yourself a Lithuanian basketball
T-shirt.  Note that the information published in the San Francisco
Examiner is erroneous.  If you want this info only, 
skip the rest of the post to the end!

Nelson said that his involvement with the Lithuanian team was one of the
best experiences of his life.  He said that in the pre-Olympic qualifying
tournament, the Lithuanian team felt it was more important to beat the
Unified team than to qualify for the Olympics.  Recall that they beat the
Unified team by over 30 points.  He said that the Unified team pretty much
quit playing in the second half of that game.  

Nelson also said that once they qualified, the Lithuanian team was
more concerned about beating the Unified team than winning a medal.
When the Lithuanian team was beaten in the Olympics by the Unified team,
Nelson said that the team was so devastated that no one spoke a word in
the locker room for over ten minutes.  He said that some Lithuanians back home
committed suicide over the loss!  Fortunately, they got a chance to
redeem themselves in the bronze medal game, although it took a minor miracle
for Croatia to beat the Unified team.

Nelson mentioned that two members of the Unified team were Latvians.  These
two players were heavily criticized in all the Baltic states.  They chose
to play for the Unified team so that they could receive better exposure
and obtain an overseas contract.  This worked as one of these players, Gunters,
obtained a tryout with the Timberwolves.

Nelson made some comments about the Lithuanian center, Sabonis.  He said
that if he played in the NBA, he would be one of the top 10 centers.
Not only is he as big as Mark Eaton (7'4"), but he is considerably more
mobile, and has a great shot.  Nelson said that he has the hands of
Chris Mullin.  Also, Sabonis led the team in 3-point shots made during the
pre-Olympic tournament.  Nelson also said that he does not expect Sabonis
to ever play in the NBA.  Evidently, since his Achilles tendon injury,
Sabonis believes he only has a certain number of games left in his leg, and
prefers to play in Europe where they only play 40 games a year.

About the Warriors draft, Nelson said that the Warriors were very happy
with their pick, Sprewell.  He said that the reason the Warriors did not
take a chance on some of the bigger guys available(e.g. Sean Rooks, Elmore
Spencer, Popeye Jones, or Marlon Maxey) is that it is the Warriors' philosophy
to take the best player available, irrespective of size.  He said that
the only time that they deviated from this policy since Nelson took over
was the time they drafted Les Jepsen in the second round (3 years ago),
and passed up on Toni Kukoc to do so.  This was a lesson to them to
stick to their philosophy.

Nelson added that they are still pursuing deals "all over the world" to obtain
a big man, but that it is very hard to consummate trades in the NBA.  He
said that the Warriors came very close twice this summer but the trades
felt apart at the last minute.

As promised, here's the information about the Lithuanian T-shirts.  If you
saw the Olympic medal ceremony, these are the Grateful Dead tie-dye shirts
the Lithuanian team wore.  They feature a skeleton slam-dunking.  They were
gifts from the Grateful Dead rock group.  The Dead also made a huge
monetary contribution to the team.

Sunday's San Francisco Examiner published a number at the Warrior's office
where you could order a shirt.  However, they did not anticipate the
huge demand out there.  Nelson said that they had already received over
1000 orders in less than a day.  Thus, this number is no longer valid and
BASS tickets is now handling the ordering.  The shirts come in two
sizes, large and x-large.  The cost is $30 per shirt, and part of the
proceeds goes towards the Lithuanian Olympic team.

Here's the number:

510-762-BASS.

				Best wishes to Jerry Garcia.
				Terry Wong
				terry@garfield.Stanford.EDU