The Motherland, the Godfather, and the Birth of a Basketball Dynasty: American Efforts to Promote Basketball in Lithuania

Abstract

The United States transported basketball to other nations around the world in many different ways and with varying degrees of success during the early decades of the twentieth century. In Lithuania, the efforts of Lithuanian American star Frank Lubin and other Americans in Lithuania proved wildly successful and wove basketball into the fabric of Lithuanian national identity. Throughout the late 1930s, these members of the Lithuanian community in the United States spent a great deal of time in their motherland and changed local perceptions of basketball to the point at which it became Lithuania's national pastime.