For Domantas Sabonis, basketball has long been il.
“Never a plan B,” said Sabonis, 26. “Only basketball. »
In several of his baby photos, Sabonis said, he is holding a basketball. The same goes for her 1 year old son.
This makes basketball a kind of generational heritage. Sabonis’ father is Arvydas Sabonis, a Lithuanian player who dominated Europe, spent seven seasons in the NBA and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.
Now Domantas is the dominant Sabonis. In his seventh NBA season, he’s a three-time All-Star and helped the Sacramento Kings clinch a playoff berth for the first time since 2006, breaking the longest active playoff drought in the four major men’s professional sports leagues. North Americans. Sabonis is the NBA’s top rebounder, one of its best passers, and one of its most effective scorers.
From his game, one can easily draw a straight line to his father. At 7-foot-3, Arvydas was a skilled passer with refined post skills and immense upper-body strength. It wasn’t uncommon to see him go to Shaquille O’Neal and hold on. Domantas’ hands are drawn to loose balls around the basket and defenders bounce off him like rubber. Arvydas had more of a shooting touch; Domantas is faster, but not fast by today’s standards. Slow centers that stay close to the basket have gone out of style over the past decade, but the 6-foot-11 Domantas have turned this paint-killing style of play into a hit for the Kings. In some ways, Domantas’ game is a stubborn homage to Arvydas.
“It’s the eyes, the fingers, the hands, the little gestures,” said his older brother Tautvydas Sabonis, who goes by the name Tuti. He added: “You throw a pass. It leaves his fingers like that and it’s like, it’s 101 dad.
Tuti, in a videoconference from Lithuania, held out his hands in protest.
“The most important thing is that they both get upset the same way,” he said. “These are the same characters, the same state of mind. It’s ‘rah, rah, rah, rah, rah!’ Lithuanian. All the dirty words you can imagine. Add some English. Throw the Spanish in there.
Tuti, 30, is a basketball coach in Lithuania and has played professionally in Europe. So did Sabonis’ other brother, 31-year-old Zygimantas, whose name is Zygi. Domantas was born during Arvydas’ rookie year playoffs in the NBA with the Portland Trail Blazers. A sister, Ausrine, was born the following year. Domantas and Tuti recalled that the Blazers practice facility had a kids’ room where they could try all the flavors of Gatorade and play the ‘floor is lava’ game while they waited for practice to end. . Players like Scottie Pippen and Rasheed Wallace would refer to Zygi, Tuti and Domantas as Sabonis Jr., Sabonis Jr. Jr. and Sabonis Jr. Jr. Jr. Guard Damon Stoudamire told them his Afro just got his fingers in an electrical device. plug.
Shortly before Arvydas retired from the NBA for the second and final time, in 2003, the family moved to Spain. It wasn’t until Domantas was 10, when he started playing basketball and watching videos on YouTube, that he understood his father’s prodigious basketball legacy, he said. declared.
“We knew he was a basketball player, but we saw him as our father,” said Sabonis, who, like his father, is comfortable out of the spotlight. “We didn’t know what he really was. »
He said his dad didn’t push any of the kids to play basketball. Neither did their mother, Ingrida Sabonis, a former Miss Lithuania. As a teenager, Domantas played professionally for Spanish club Unicaja Malaga before spending two years with Gonzaga. Tommy Lloyd, who as an assistant coach helped recruit Domantas to Gonzaga, said he spoke to Tuti but only met Arvydas after Domantas committed to college, which was unusual .
Lloyd said Arvydas told him: “’My son should have the right to make his own decisions. And I feel good as a parent allowing him to do that since I was never allowed to.
The Blazers drafted Arvydas in 1986, but it took him nearly a decade to make his NBA debut. Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, whose officials wanted Arvydas to remain an amateur so he could compete in the 1988 Olympics. After the Olympics, Arvydas doubted his ability to compete with the best in the NBA because he had several Achilles tendon injuries. In 1990, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Two years later, Sabonis played for the Lithuanian Olympic team, helping them win a bronze medal.
(The American men — the Dream Team — caught the eye at the 1992 Olympics, but Lithuania’s tie-dye warm-ups sponsored by the Grateful Dead also became a cultural sensation.)
The Blazers continued to pitch Arvydas upon his arrival in the United States. After years of courting lawmakers, diplomats and basketball executives, he finally relented.
“If it’s not the NBA now, never,” Arvydas, 30, said at the time. ” Last chance. »
Arvydas, who declined an interview request, spent seven seasons with the Blazers between 1995 and 2003. He skipped a year, citing mental and physical exhaustion. Now he texts Domantas after each of his NBA games, despite the 10-hour time difference between Sacramento and Lithuania. And if he’s not texting Domantas, he’s texting siblings.
“I think my dad is our best friend,” Tuti said. ” He is incredible. He watches all of Domas’ games. He always calls me, ‘Are you watching?’ I’m like, ‘Dad, I have to work tomorrow.’ »
Although Arvydas never coached his children, he always gave particular advice.
“You have to take care of the playmaker,” Tuti said. “You’re not going to worry about the back because he’s there to shoot. The point guard, he will give you the ball to score. So if you have to take someone out for a drink, that’s who you take care of.
For Domantas, it’s De’Aaron Fox, a lightning-fast 25-year-old point guard who partnered with Sabonis to lift Sacramento’s fortunes. Fox played in Sacramento his entire six-year career, but Sabonis only joined him last season in a trade from Indiana.
“They want me to be one of the main pieces and have a say and change something,” Sabonis said. “And that’s just motivation. »
Mike Brown, in his first season as Kings coach, crafted an offense that relied on Sabonis’ passing skills, which helped balance the ground and gave Fox more room to operate. . It was a resounding success: Sacramento has the best offense in the NBA, and this season Fox made its first All-Star team. Fox said Sabonis is one of the best finishers and passers in the league, and he puts up solid screens to dislodge pesky defenders for his guards.
“I think any offense can be successful around someone like that,” Fox said.
Sabonis’ hard-nosed game easily won over his teammates and coaches, and made him a fan favourite. He played with a thumb injury for much of the season, but he didn’t shy away from contact, whether at the post or diving for a rebound. Brown recalled that Sabonis once apologized to him for poor turnover. But Brown was not concerned.
“‘As hard as you play, I don’t know if I could ever get mad at you for turning the ball over,'” Brown recalled in response to Sabonis. “I said, ‘Just go sit down.’ »
It might seem daunting for Sabonis to follow in his famous father’s footsteps, especially in the NBA spotlight. But he insists his father’s basketball legacy hasn’t created additional pressure. In fact, he embraced it, wearing his father’s No. 11 in college and with Indiana before arriving in Sacramento, where No. 11 is retired.
“Since I was a child, you always hear: ‘Your father is better than you. It’s your father. It’s your father. You hear it all the time in every game,” Sabonis said. “But if anything, without it I wouldn’t have been where I am. If anything, I use it as fuel to be better.
Brown said Sabonis “probably wants to be more impactful and better than his dad to show his dad that yeah, I can do it as your son.”
Lloyd, Gonzaga’s former assistant who is now the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Arizona, said Domantas used to tell him he was motivated by respect for his fathers and his brothers.
“He felt like he was carrying on the Sabonis basketball legacy,” Lloyd said. “And that’s something he took really, really, really seriously. I don’t mean there was a fear of failure, but there was definitely a desire to succeed for the family name.
When it comes to their NBA career, “Sabonis Jr. Jr. Jr.” has already surpassed his father, even though the league never got to see Arvydas at his best. Domantas helped revitalize a Kings franchise desperate for relevance. There was no cross-generational chatter, however.
“My dad loves it,” Tuti said. ” It is your son. He is playing at the highest level of all time. These are not braces. It’s not about that. It’s just put on the TV and enjoy your own son.
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