The 1986 Draft Picks That Blew Open the NBA's Borders Forever

The Night America Laughed at the Future

On June 17, 1986, NBA Commissioner David Stern stepped to the podium inside the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden and delivered a selection that drew audible mockery from the crowd. With the last pick of the first round, the Portland Trail Blazers selected Arvydas Sabonis of the Soviet Union. The boos cascaded down. TBS broadcast hosts Bob Neal and Larry Donald openly laughed on air. A Portland beat writer reportedly swore he'd jump off the Broadway Bridge if Sabonis ever suited up in the NBA.

The room thought it was a joke. Portland treated it as a declaration of war on conventional scouting wisdom.

Two rounds later, the Blazers doubled down, grabbing Dražen Petrović from Yugoslavia — another communist country, another player most American basketball minds had never watched play a full game. In the span of a single draft, Portland planted two flags in European soil that would eventually reshape the entire landscape of professional basketball.

This wasn't just a draft. It was a tipping point.

The Pre-1986 Landscape: Europe as an Afterthought

To understand how radical Portland's strategy was, you have to grasp the NBA's relationship with international players in the early-to-mid 1980s. It was, in a word, dismissive.

European basketball existed in a parallel universe that American scouts largely ignored. The Cold War cast a long shadow over player evaluation. Soviet and Yugoslavian athletes weren't just physically distant — they were politically inaccessible. There was no reliable game film pipeline, no agent infrastructure, no clear pathway from a European club system to an NBA roster.

The few international players who had cracked the NBA prior to 1986 were treated as novelties:

• Hakeem Olajuwon (Nigeria via University of Houston) and Detlef Schrempf (Washington via West Germany) had entered the league through the American college system, not the European pro ranks
• Georgi Glouchkov of Bulgaria had played six games for the Phoenix Suns in 1985 before vanishing from the league
• The concept of drafting a player you might not be able to sign for years — or ever — seemed like a waste of a pick

Portland's front office saw it differently. They saw market inefficiency. They saw value where everyone else saw risk.

Scouting the Invisible: What Portland Actually Knew

Arvydas Sabonis

Sabonis was no mystery to those paying attention. Standing 7-foot-3 with guard-like passing vision and a soft shooting touch, he had already established himself as arguably the best center in European basketball by his early twenties. Playing for Žalgiris Kaunas in the Soviet league, Sabonis had helped the club reach the 1986 Euroleague Final Four and was widely regarded as the most complete big man outside the NBA.

He had actually been drafted 24th overall by the Atlanta Hawks in the1985 Draft, but the selection was voided because Sabonis was not yet 21 years old, which violated NBA rules at the time. Portland had him rated far higher than the 24th pick. When he slid to them at No. 24 in 1986, they pounced.

The catch? Sabonis was dealing with a devastating Achilles injury suffered during the 1986 season — an injury widely believed to have been aggravated by the overuse demands of Soviet national team obligations. Portland drafted a damaged asset at a discount, fully aware that his NBA arrival might be delayed by years. They were betting on long-term medical recovery and geopolitical change simultaneously.

Dražen Petrović

Petrović was a different profile entirely. Where Sabonis was a towering, cerebral playmaker, Petrović was a 6-foot-5 shooting guard with an assassin's mentality. Playing for Cibona Zagreb in Yugoslavia, he had already posted scoring performances that bordered on absurd:

• 51 points in a European club game
• Named Euroscar European Player of the Year in 1986
• Led Yugoslavia to a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles

Petrović had a scorer's hunger that translated across any system, any court, any era. Portland selected him in the third round (60th overall) — a pick that cost almost nothing and carried enormous upside.

Fit Check: Did Portland's Roster Actually Need Them?

This is where the analysis gets fascinating. The 1985-86 Trail Blazers finished 40-42, missing the playoffs. Their roster featured Clyde Drexler, Kiki Vandeweghe, and Jim Paxson in the backcourt and on the wing. At center, they had Steve Johnson and Sam Bowie — the latter infamously drafted ahead of Michael Jordan in 1984.

The fit question breaks down into two categories:

Sabonis (immediate need: HIGH)

1. Bowie's career was already being derailed by chronic leg injuries. Portland desperately needed a franchise-caliber center.
2. Sabonis's passing ability from the high post would have perfectly complemented Drexler's slashing style — a proto-Jokić-to-Murray dynamic decades before Denver existed.
3. His defensive presence at 7-foot-3 would have anchored a team that ranked in the bottom third of the league in defensive rating.

Petrović (immediate need: MODERATE)

1. Drexler was already emerging as a star, so Petrović wasn't filling a vacuum. But his elite shooting would have spaced the floor in ways the 1980s NBA rarely valued.
2. His microwave scoring ability off the bench would have given Portland a weapon no other team possessed in that era.
3. Long-term, he could have been Drexler's ideal backcourt partner — two aggressive, athletic guards who could score from anywhere.

The roster fit was there. The timeline was the problem.

The Tragedy of Delay

Sabonis didn't play his first NBA game until 1995 — nine years after he was drafted. By then, he was 31 years old and his body had been ravaged by the Achilles injury, knee problems, and the relentless demands of European club and international play without modern sports medicine.

When he finally arrived in Portland, Sabonis was still remarkable. In his rookie season, he averaged 14.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game and immediately became the team's starting center. His basketball IQ was off the charts. His passing was unlike anything the NBA had seen from a player his size.

But Portland fans were always left wondering: what if he'd arrived at 23 instead of 31?

"If Sabonis had come to the NBA at 21 or 22, healthy, I believe he would have been one of the five greatest centers to ever play the game. That's not hyperbole. That's what the talent was." — Longtime NBA scout, speaking on international player evaluation in the 1980s

Petrović's story was even more heartbreaking. He arrived in the NBA in 1989, initially buried on Portland's bench behind Drexler and Terry Porter. Frustrated by limited minutes, he was traded to the New Jersey Nets in January 1991. Once unleashed, he was spectacular:

• 20.6 points per game in 1991-92 with the Nets
• 22.3 points per game in 1992-93 on 51.8% shooting from the field and 44.9% from three
• Named to the All-NBA Third Team in 1993

On June 7, 1993, at the age of 28, Dražen Petrović was killed in a car accident in Germany. The basketball world lost one of its purest shooters and fiercest competitors before he ever reached his prime.

The Domino Effect: How Portland's Picks Reshaped the NBA

The direct on-court returns for Portland were limited by injury and tragedy. But the strategic vision behind those picks? It changed the sport permanently.

What Those Draft Picks Proved

1. European players were not lesser athletes. Sabonis and Petrović, even in limited NBA time, demonstrated skills that matched or exceeded their American counterparts at their positions.
2. The draft was a global talent marketplace. Portland's willingness to invest picks in overseas players — even with the uncertainty of arrival timelines — opened the door for every franchise to think internationally.
3. Scouting infrastructure had to expand. Those two picks forced NBA teams to invest in European scouting networks that had previously been nonexistent or token operations.

The numbers tell the story of what followed:

• In the 1990s, international players in the NBA grew from a handful to a significant minority
• The 1998 Draft produced Dirk Nowitzki (Germany) and Paul Pierce (USA) as the defining talents of its class
• By the 2000s, international players were All-Stars, MVPs, and championship cornerstones: Tim Duncan (U.S. Virgin Islands), Steve Nash (Canada), Tony Parker (France), Manu Ginobili (Argentina), Pau Gasol (Spain)
• The 2023 NBA Draft featured international players selected first overall (Victor Wembanyama, France) and across every round

The Global Game Is the Only Game

The modern NBA is unrecognizable from the league David Stern presided over in 1986. Today:

• Over 100 international players from more than 40 countries are on NBA rosters in any given season
• The MVP award has been won by international players in six of the last seven seasons (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid)
• The 2023 and 2024 NBA champions (Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics) both featured international players as central figures
• Global revenue, international broadcasting, and overseas basketball academies are now core pillars of the NBA's business model

None of this happens without someone going first. Portland went first, in the most hostile environment imaginable — a room full of people laughing at them.

Bottom Line

The 1986 Trail Blazers didn't just draft two European players. They drafted the future of basketball — and had to wait a decade, endure tragedy, and watch other franchises harvest the rewards to prove they were right all along.

By Tyler Johnson