Paspalj came to the Spurs courtesy of Gregg Popovich, the team's assistant coach at the time, who saw the 23-year-old at a warm-up tournament in Dortmund, Germany in early June where the Yugoslav national team had been preparing for EuroBasket 1989 later that month. Liking Paspalj's game, Popovich established initial contact with the player through Paspalj's national squad training camp teammate Zoran Jovanović who spoke English having played college ball at Louisiana State while retired basketball player Nebojša Bukumirović also participated as an operational liaison in the subsequent transfer process from Partizan to San Antonio. When approached by Popovich about coming to the Spurs, Paspalj immediately expressed interest despite later admitting to never actually believing anything would come of it as the notion of playing basketball in the NBA seemed vague and far fetched to him. Nevertheless, the acquisition was finalized following the EuroBasket championship where Yugoslavia won gold in dominating fashion with Paspalj making the All-Tournament Team by contributing 13.4 points per game over five games, all of them blowout wins for the rampant Yugoslavs. In 2015 Paspalj recalled his final few days in Yugoslavia in summer 1989 before setting off for America: