Sweet Redemption in Tie Dye: Grateful Lithuania!

This is 1992. It’s a pathway of history. We have Susi Susanti breaking records to Badminton golden medal. While on the Basketball side, every eye is keen to see Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan on the American Team. 

Yea that’s great, but how about the real story is laid on the Bronze medal? The brand new country's sheer colour is quite resembling an African or Latin America country. But this is the story of Lithuania

The Lithuanian national team arrived in Spain running on pure pride. Their country had just broken free from the Soviet Union. The domestic economy was completely shattered, and their sports federation had absolutely zero budget to send the athletes to the games.

A local newspaper picked up the story of this struggling team. That article ended up in the hands of the Grateful Dead. As a psychedelic rock collective built entirely around the concept of freedom, the band immediately recognized the weight of the situation. They wrote a massive check to fund the trip and helped produce a line of heavy tie dye shirts sporting the national colors of red, yellow, and green.

Featuring a skeleton dunking a basketball designed by artist Greg Speirs, the merchandise sales covered the rest of their travel expenses. A completely random piece of counterculture clothing instantly became the spiritual armor for Arvydas Sabonis and his squad.

The climax of this tournament delivered a geopolitical script that no Hollywood writer could match. The bracket perfectly aligned to put Lithuania against the Unified Team for the bronze medal. They were quite literally facing the ghosts of their former oppressors, the soviet union. 

What a metaphor, anyway. 

Lithuania fought through the tension and secured an 82 to 78 victory. What a david v goliath story of the history of post-soviet. When they were called up to the Olympic podium, the players flatly refused to wear traditional formal tracksuits. They stepped up to receive their medals wearing those exact Grateful Dead tie dye shirts. Aside from economical collapse, that very same moment is their mark of independence, a new way to look up the future. 

a tiny fraction of a massive empire could stand entirely on its own two feet.