Guess who said this?
"I love Pizza Hut. Oh, the supreme pizza. It's great. I eat it five times this week . . . I want to see Eddie Murphy and Whitney Houston and Jack Nicholson. I want to buy a Mitsubishi. I love Marlboro cigarettes . . ."Was it (A) A recent emigrant from East Germany, (B) The president of Pizza Hut, (C) Ferris Buehler, (D) Zarko Paspalj?
If you said "D," give yourself charter membership in the Zarko Paspalj Fan Club, now forming in San Antonio at the Pizza Hut of your choice.
When Paspalj said the above, right after the part about the Marlboro cigarettes, he added, " . . . I want to play in NBA and make San Antonio basketball fans happy. I come to America with hope."
Not to mention a good shooting touch.
Paspalj (Or "Z-Man," as he has quickly come to be called by his Spurs teammates) is one of six players from either Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union who will be playing in the National Basketball Association this coming season. During the offseason, while Michael Jordan was out playing golf, and Jon Koncak was pricing Ferraris, and Danny Ferry and Brian Shaw were signing to play in Italy, enough Soviets and Yugos were signing on with the NBA to form a lineup of their own.
If you're keeping score - Ya? - you may now make these roster additions: - Paspalj, a 6-9 forward, to the Spurs.
- Vlade Divac, a 7-1 center from Yugoslavia, to the Los Angeles Lakers.
- Alexander Volkov, a 6-10 forward from the Soviet Union, to the Atlanta Hawks.
- Sarunas Marciulionis, a 6-5 guard from the Soviet Union, to the Golden State Warriors.
- Drazen Petrovic, a 6-5 guard from Yugoslavia, to the Portland Trail Blazers.
- And Dino Radja, a 6-10 forward from Yugoslavia, to the Boston Celtics.
Obviously, it has been quite a summer for NBA recruiting in Eastern Europe. There are now 600 percent more Yugoslavs and Soviets in the NBA than there ever were before.
The reaction - and this should come as no surprise - in Belgrade and Zadar and other hotbeds of basketball in Yugoslavia, has not been overall pro-American.
For a time, the Yugoslav government, showing entirely no compassion for the Lakers' need for a center to replace Abdul-Jabbar, was considering trying to force Divac to return this fall to serve a year in the Yugoslavian Army. Radja's team, the European champion Yugoplastika, tried to enforce what they said was a four-year contract that extended through 1992. And Petrovic's team, Real Madrid of Spain, demanded a $1.5 million buyout by the Trail Blazers.
But all these hurdles were overcome; as was an initial problem with the Soviet government about, well, you know, not that they're capitalists or anything, but just what the split would be from Marciulionis's and Volkov's contracts. (Apparently, each player will keep about 25 percent of his salary and send the rest home to the comrades).
And so the Americanization of these athletes begins.
In the case of Boston's Radja and the Lakers' Divac, they each displayed immediate savvy at diplomacy.
Radja, 22, showed up for the press conference announcing his signing in Boston dressed in a Celtics T-shirt, shorts, cap and sunglasses. He said he'd always dreamed about wearing green and being a Celtic. "I feel very nice now," he said. "It's like I'm the richest man in the world." (A statement that will no doubt cause Karl Malone to ask for a renegotiation of his contract).
In Los Angeles, Divac attended his coming-out press conference carrying a Lakers jersey with the number 12 on it. He explained that he had asked for that number because it was Laker Coach Pat Riley's number when he played in the NBA. Nothing like getting off on the right foot with the coach.
The two Russians, neither of whom speaks English, have been understandably low-key. Marciulionis had to survive a recruiting tug-of-war between the Warriors and the Hawks, after which he said, "In terms of nervous tension, it was the type I was not accustomed to. It ate at my nerves. I would not look forward to a situation where there were five or six teams. You could go nuts."
He can be thankful, then, that he did not go through college recruiting in America.
It remains to be seen just what kind of impact these imports will have on America. And what kind of impact America will have on them. But as is already obvious with Paspalj, there will be changes.
Much as he loves those Marlboros, the young Yugoslav read the Surgeon General's warnings on the packs, and has cut back on his smoking.
"In Yugoslavia, everyone smoke," he said. "I start when I was 11 and I smoke two, three packs every day. But maybe down to 10 cigarettes a day now."
Which could explain his preoccupation with the supreme pizza at Pizza Hut. As for his preoccupation with NBA basketball - he turned down an offer for twice the money in Spain - that's summed up when he says, "United States is best basketball in the world." And their Mitsubishis aren't bad, either.