The crowd erupts as Sarunas Marciulionis drops a screaming guitar lead on top of bandmate Arvydas Sabonis' power riffs -- no, now the audience has completely freaked out as Bob Weir fakes to Phil Lesh in the corner, then fires a no-look pass to a slashing Mickey Hart, while Jerry Garcia look benignly on.
Uhh, time out.
One of the more sweetly weird connections on this earth is that of the Grateful Dead, the Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team, and the NBA. It began in 192, when the Dad supported the Lithuanians' training camp, and mushroomed into a t-shirt fad that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.
Now in 1996 they're doing it again, putting out a series of t-shirts and collectibles that is expected to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.
Sarunas Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis, and coach Donnie Nelson of the Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team and the NBA and Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead will give you the details May 21, 1996 at 11 a.m. at the Hard Rock Cafe, Sacrament & Van Ness in San Francisco. The event will include a ceremony in which the late Jerry Garcia's 'jersey' will be 'retired' as a gesture of thanks to the Dead's generosity -- in fact, the 1996 uniforms will specifically acknowledge his memory ( but you have to come to see what we mean ).
We promise you a slam dunk of a time, with sound track you won't believe.
MERCHANDISING FACTS
The new Grateful Dead / Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team t-shirts (with the incredibly cool Grateful Dead logo made of a basketball net, in Garcia basic black or tie-die ) will be available at all of your finer clothing stores ( and anywhere else people will sell them ) and will cost $28.
The t-shirts will also be sold by Grateful Dead Merchandising to the increased benefit of the Rex Foundation.
Ordering information.
BACKGROUND
The unlikely union of the Grateful Dead, the Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team, and the NBA came about because Ram Rod, the Dead's long-time road crew chief, is a hoops fan. The end result in 1992 was a popular fad and hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for Lithuanian children's charities.
In March, 1992, the Dead and the Golden State Warriors found themselves on the road together in Auburn Hills, Michigan -- the Dead ending a tour at The Palace and the Warriors having a night off before a game with the Pistons. So the Dead extended an invitation to their home-town Warriors, and then-coach Don Nelson, Assistant Coach Donnie Nelson, and Sarunas Marciulionis came to the show -- and had a great time, of course. On his way out, Sarunas slipped a band staff member a request for a donation toward the Lithuanian Olympic Basketball team's training expenses. This is not the sort of thing that the Dead's Rex Foundation normally underwrites -- but Ram Rod and his employees are nothing if not flexible and possessed of a sense of humor, and the grant was made.
A mutual friend kicked in some tie-died warm-up sweats and t-shirt, which featured a Dead-style skeleton dunking a basketball. The team loved the t-shirts, and in fact began to get offers of $100 and more as they wore them on the streets of Barcelona during the games. When they wore the sweats and t-shirts to their Bronze medal ceremony, more than a billion people saw the shirts -- and a healthy percentage wanted to own one. So, after the Olympics, the Dead and the Warriors teamed up to sell them, with a hefty chunk going to Lithuanian children's charities.
So, it's possible to do good and be incredibly stylish all at the same time. We're glad Ram Rod likes basketball.
