Basketball has always been for Domantas Sabonis He. She.
“There is never a plan B,” Sabonis, 26, said. “Only basketball.”
In many of his children’s photos, Sabonis has said that he holds a basketball. Same goes for his one year old son.
This makes basketball a kind of inheritance of generations. Sabonis’ father is Arvydas Sabonis, a Lithuanian player who dominated Europe, spent seven seasons in the NBA and was drafted into Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.
Right now, Domantas is in control of Sabonis. In his seventh season in the NBA, he was a three-time All-Star and helped the Sacramento Kings clinch a playoff spot For the first time since 2006broke down Longest active postseason drought in four major North American men’s professional sports leagues. Sabonis is the best player in the NBA, one of the best passing big men and one of the most proficient scorers.
From his game, one could easily draw a straight line to his father. At 7-foot-3, Arvydas was a slick passer with accurate sawing skills and tremendous upper body strength. It wasn’t unusual to see him go Shaquille O’Neal and He caught himself. Domantas’ hand snaps loose balls around the basket, and his defenders jump like rubber. Arvydas had more of a shooting touch; Domantas is faster, though not fast by today’s standards. The slow centers that stay close to the basket have fallen out of vogue over the past decade, but the 6-foot-11 Domantas have turned this bruising style of painting into a hit for the Kings. In some ways, Domantas is a tenacious tribute to Arvydas.
“It’s the eyes, the fingers, the hands and the little gestures,” said his older brother. nationalism Sabonis, who passes by Totti. He added, “You throw a pass. He leaves his fingers like that and it feels like 101 dad.”
Totti, on a video conference call from Lithuania, extended his hands wide to demonstrate.
“The most important thing is that they get angry the same way,” he said. It’s the same characters, same mentality. It’s “Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah!” Lithuanian. All the swear words you can imagine. Put a little English in there. Throw the Spanish in there.”
Totti, 30, is a basketball coach in Lithuania and has played professionally in Europe. So does Sabonis’ other brother, Zygimantas, 31, who goes by Zygi’s side. Domantas was born during the playoffs in Arvydas’ rookie year in the NBA with the Portland Trail Blazers. Her sister, Osrine, was born the following year. Domantas and Totti noted that the Blazers’ training facility had a kids’ room where they could try all the flavors of Gatorade and play “floor is lava” while waiting for practice to finish. Players like Scottie Pippen and Rashid Wallace would refer to Ziggy, Totti, and Dumantas as Sabonis Jr., Sabonis Jr., and Sabonis Junior Jr. Plug.
Shortly before Arvydas retired from the NBA for the second and final time, in 2003, the family moved to Spain. He said it wasn’t until Dumantas was 10, when he started playing basketball and watching feature videos on YouTube, that he understood his father’s great basketball legacy.
“We knew he was a basketball player, but we saw him as a father to us,” said Sabonis, who like his father feels comfortable out of the limelight. “We didn’t know what it actually was.”
He said his father never pushed any of the kids to play basketball. Nor did their mother, Ingrida Sabonis, former Miss Lithuania. As a teenager, Dumantas played professionally for Spanish club Unicaja Malaga before spending two years at Gonzaga. Tommy Lloyd, who as an assistant coach helped recruit Domantas to Gonzaga, said he spoke to Totti but did not meet Arvydas until after Domantas committed to college, which was unusual.
Lloyd said that 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 because I’ve never been allowed to.”
The Blazers drafted Arvydas in 1986, but it took nearly a decade for him 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 he could compete with the MVP in the NBA because he had multiple Achilles injuries. In 1990, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Two years later, Sabonis played for the Lithuanian Olympic team, helping it win a bronze medal.
(The American men—the Dream Team—got a lot of attention at the 1992 Olympics, but the warm-ups in Lithuania sponsored by the Grateful Dead also It became a cultural sensation.)
The Blazers continued to promote Arvydas upon coming to the United States. After years of courtship from lawmakers, diplomats, and basketball executives, he finally relented.
“If not the NBA now, it never will,” 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 one year, Citing mental and physical exhaustion. Now he’s texting Dumantas after every NBA game, despite the 10-hour difference between Sacramento and Lithuania. And if he wasn’t texting the Domantas, he was texting the siblings.
“I think my dad is our best friend,” said Totti. He’s amazing. He watches all of Duma’s games. He’s always calling me, ‘Are you watching?’ I’m like, Dad, I have to work tomorrow.”
Although Arvydas never trained his children, he always gave one particular piece of advice.
“You have to take care of the base,” Totti recounted. “You’re not going to take care of the guard because he’s there to shoot. The rule is, he’s going to give you the ball to score. So if you have to take someone out for drinks, that’s the one you take care of.”
For Domantas, that’s De’Aaron Fox, a 25-year-old fast guard who was Sabonis’ partner in raising Sacramento’s fortunes. Fox played in Sacramento his entire six-year career, but Sabonis joined him only 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, coaching the Kings in his first season, designed an offense that relied on Sabonis’ passing skills, helping to balance the floor and give Fox more room to operate. It was a resounding success: for Sacramento Best offense in the NBAAnd this season, Fox made his first All-Star team. Sabonis is one of the best passers and rushers in the league, Fox said, and he puts up powerful screens to knock out defenders who trouble his guards.
“I think any attack can be successful around someone like that,” Fox said.
Sabonis’ powerful play easily won over his teammates and coaches, and made him a crowd favorite. He’s been playing through a thumb injury for most of the season, but he’s never been out of contact, either at the post or while diving for a rebound. Brown remembers Sabonis once apologizing to him for a bad turnover. But Brown wasn’t worried.
“As far as you play, I don’t know if I can get mad at you for turning the ball over,” Brown recalls responding to Sabonis. “I said, ‘Just sit down.’”
It might seem difficult for Sabonis to follow in his famous father’s footsteps, especially in light of an NBA scout but he insists his father’s basketball legacy didn’t create additional stress. In fact, he embraced it, wearing his father’s No. 11 in college and with Indiana before arriving in Sacramento, where he retired his No. 11.
“Ever since you were a child, you have always heard: ‘Your father is better than you. This is your father. Your father is that. “You hear it all the time in every game,” Sabonis said. “But if anything, without it, I wouldn’t be where I am. If anything, I use it as fuel to be better.”
Brown said that Sabonis “maybe he wants to be more influential and better than his father to show his father, yeah, I can do that as your son.”
Lloyd, a former Gonzaga assistant who is now the men’s basketball coach at the University of Arizona, said Domantas would tell him he was motivated by the respect of his fathers and brothers.
“He felt like he was carrying on the Sabonis basketball legacy,” said Lloyd. “And that’s something he took really, really, really seriously. I don’t want to say there was a fear of failure, but there was definitely a desire to succeed for the family name.”
As far as their NBA careers go, “Sabonis Jr. Jr. Jr.” He has already surpassed his father, though the league hasn’t been able to see Arvydas at his best. Domantas helped revitalize a Kings franchise that’s desperate for relevance. However, there was no idle talk between the generations.
“My dad loves it,” said Totti. “He’s your son. He’s playing at the highest level he’s ever been. It’s not about the awards. It’s not about that. It’s just putting on the TV and enjoying your son.”