It's Moscow, 1989,
and Lithuanian basketball star Sharunis Marshalonis is walking nervously through the airport.
I didn't sleep much, you know, all kinds of things going through your head,
you know, so I thought maybe something will happen on the way to the airport or something.
If all goes to plan, a new life awaits, playing basketball for the NBA in the U.S.
But first, he must cross the Iron Curtain.
It is a time of political earthquake.
The communist bloc is fragmenting.
And Lithuanians are risking their lives to free themselves from half a century of Soviet rule.
We had tanks on the streets.
We didn't know if our dream of independence was going to start a war.
From the BBC World Service, a new three-part series of amazing sports stories,
Bill Walton's The Grateful Team.
It's a story which brings together sport, politics and rock and roll.
We had a responsibility not only to win,
but to achieve a victory so that the nation could be even more united in such difficult times.
Can newly independent Lithuania send a basketball team to the 1992 Olympics and prove themselves on the world stage?
I never experienced any big concerts in Lithuania.
So that was my first experience with this live Grateful Dead concert.
And how does an American rock band become the unlikely ally of Lithuanian basketball?