Catch This!

He was just 17 when he became a starter on the Soviet national team that toured the U.S. in the fall of 1982, during which it split a pair of games with Indiana University and narrowly lost to a University of Virginia team that featured Ralph Sampson. "I thought he was as good a prospect as I had ever seen," Indiana coach Bob Knight later said. "He was stronger than Bill Walton. I couldn't get over what potential he had. Such a great raw talent."

In the '80s Sabonis starred for Lithuania's Zalgiris Kaunas team, which he led to three consecutive Soviet Union titles, and for the Soviet national team. But injuries began to diminish some of Sabonis's skills. While playing for Zalgiris Kaunas in 1987, he ruptured his right Achilles tendon. Only three months later, when he fell while climbing a flight of stairs to answer the phone, he ruptured the tendon again before it had fully healed. Tendinitis in his knees followed, and before long Sabonis was not only wearing a heavy ankle brace for the Achilles but also encasing his knees and feet in ice after games.

Despite his injuries Sabonis maintained his status as one of the best European players ever. After he helped lead the U.S.S.R. to a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, Soviet coach Aleksandr Gomelsky suggested that it might be time for Sabonis to test himself in the NBA. Sabonis took Gomelsky into the locker room, rolled down his socks to reveal the scars and discoloration below his calves and asked, "Do you think I can play in the NBA with these?"

Still, Sabonis flirted with the possibility of signing with the Blazers, briefly moving to Portland so the team's medical staff could oversee his recovery from his Achilles tendon operations. But his own doubts about his health and the lure of lucrative deals overseas persuaded him to return to Europe. When Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Sabonis was playing in Spain. Then, when a three-year deal with Real Madrid expired after last season, he signed a five-year, $12 million contract with the Blazers. "I decided it was now for the NBA or never," he says. "Everyone wants to play in the NBA, and I thought that if I didn't try, it would always come back to me in my mind: Could I have done it? Could I have done it?"

There's no longer any doubt in anyone's mind that he can play in the NBA, even though he is not nearly as agile as he was in his prime. "The pain is always there," he says of his scarred legs. "If I didn't feel it, I would think maybe I was dead." In fact, he will draw votes for both the Sixth Man and the Rookie of the Year awards. His insertion into the starting lineup has hurt his chances of winning the former—since he will have come off the bench in more games than he started, he would still be eligible—and his status as a 31-year-old European legend makes it hard to think of him as a rookie. But Sabonis is picking up supporters for Rookie of the Year, including coaches Bill Fitch of the Los Angeles Clippers and George Karl of the Seattle SuperSonics. "There's no question," Karl says. "It's not even close. He has helped his team rebuild an attitude. His starling and his passing and his presence have given that team a confidence it didn't have earlier in the year."

What might Sabonis have achieved if he had entered the NBA in his prime? Los Angeles Lakers center Vlade Divac, a Serbian who played against Sabonis in Europe, has said that Sabonis could have been as good as the New York Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the Houston Rockets' Hakeem Olajuwon or the Orlando Magic's Shaquille O'Neal. Sabonis smiles slightly when told of this assessment. "I have thought about it, but I have not worried about it," he says. "I only know that it is better that I am here now than not at all."

Sabonis's uncertain condition was the reason Chris Dudley started 59 of the first 60 games of the season for the Blazers and Sabonis came off the bench, most often to play the second and fourth quarters. "We wanted to see how his body would hold up," Carlesimo says. "When it became clear he could handle 20 to 24 minutes, we decided we could try stretching him out a little bit, but you still won't see him go past 28 to 30 minutes very often, if at all."

Although he usually wears the expression of a weary veteran, Sabonis has taken care to display the deference of a rookie. When asked about the Strickland-Carlesimo issue, he says, "I am a first-year player, so I should not comment." Even though he understands English quite well (he's also fluent in Polish and Spanish, in addition to Lithuanian and Russian), he prefers to speak through an interpreter during interviews for fear of using the wrong English word or phrase and saying something that could be misconstrued. He has also muted his game somewhat, excising the theatrics that were a part of his style in Europe, where he was known for playing to the crowd with his gestures and making the overly flashy pass. The new, toned-down style may be part of Sabonis's broader maturation. He once had a reputation for enjoying the postgame parties almost as much as the games. Legend has it that in Lithuania his countrymen would go into a liquor store and instead of asking for vodka, request "a Sabonis." At the 1992 Olympics, after helping Lithuania win the bronze medal in the afternoon, he celebrated with such abandon that he missed the medal presentation in the evening.

But these days Sabonis goes home to his wife, Ingrida, a former model and actress, and his two sons, Zygimantas, 5, and Tautvydas, 4. Ingrida is expecting a third child in late April or early May—"just about the time the playoffs start," Sabonis says. "I am sure she will be kind enough to have the baby on an off day."

Six weeks ago the possibility of the birth's interfering with a Portland postseason game seemed remote, but the Blazers now expect to be busy well into May. "If people think we're just going to be in and out in a hurry, that's O.K.," Strickland says. "We'll just lay low and then surprise them." Like sharks, no?