Chapter 12 The New Season Begins_2

Barcelona, Milan, and Split were Europe's top teams. Split had dominated in Europe for the past two years, while Milan had won back-to-back European championships in '87 and '88. Barcelona was also a strong contender for the European championship, and over the next few years, they would compete fiercely with Split.

One could say that the strongest three basketball clubs of recent years in Europe had all gathered.

The NBA had not originally planned to send a strong team to compete; fielding a team like the Nuggets could likely easily handle Europe's top clubs.

However, considering public interest and marketing effects, Stern made a last-minute decision to deploy the international Portland Trail Blazers team to Europe to conquer and utterly defeat the European teams.

For the Trail Blazers, Sabonis, Petrović, and Divac were all basketball superstars in Europe with extremely high popularity during the late '80s.