'85 NBA Draft Revisited: Fernando Martín, The Spanish Legend

(Editor's note: This week, VICE Sports takes a look at some of the quirkier stories from the historic 1985 NBA Draft on its 30th-year anniversary. You can read the entire series here.)

Motorist Ricardo Delgado Cascales left an almost 80-foot skid mark on the road when he was unable to dodge the Lancia Thema V8-32 which had veered out of control and into his lane at 3:20 p.m. on December 3rd, 1989. Shortly afterward, cars began to line up behind the accident along Madrid's M-30 highway.

One of the firsts journalists to arrive at the scene was Raúl Cancio, a photographer at El País. He took 36 pictures without even knowing who the victims were. Cascales had been seriously hurt. He suffered swelling in his brain and a broken femur. When Cancio left the camera and looked at the other car's dashboard, he noticed it was full of photos of basketball star Fernando Martín. Cancio immediately recognized the Real Madrid player in the car because he had been the person who had taken the photographs.

Martín died instantly. Sidelined by a back injury, he was on his way to watch his Real Madrid teammates play CAI Zaragoza.

Word of his death spread almost instantly. And Spain has been mourning ever since.

Outside Spain, the 1985 draft will always be remembered for the 'frozen envelope' scandal, an unproven conspiracy theory alleging that that the New York Knicks were awarded the first pick (i.e. Patrick Ewing) through less than legal methods.

But eight non-US players were selected that day—a first ever in the NBA. Although foreign players are now commonplace in the NBA, they were still a novelty then. So essentially, the '85 draft, the first lottery draft, was also the start of the movement toward the internationalization of the game.

The New Jersey Nets chose Fernando Martín with the 38th pick; Arvydas Sabonis was chosen by the Atlanta Hawks with 77th pick. The Phoenix Suns selected the unknown Georgi Glouchkov in the ninth round. Glouchkov's selection attracted little attention at the time, but he would end up becoming the first European to play in the NBA without having previously played collegiately in the U.S.

"Fernando slept peacefully that night, he didn't stay awake to watch the live ceremony," Miguel Angel Paniagua, Martín's former agent and personal friend, said in Spanish. "The New Jersey Nets were supposed to select him and so they did. The Portland Trail Blazers had also shown an interest, but they weren't as interested as the Nets. That was due to the fact that Al Menéndez, a Hispanic scout who had been following Martín's career, had convinced the New Jersey to bet on the Spaniard."

While Sabonis went on to have an acclaimed career both in Europe and then eventually in the NBA, many thought Martín was the best international player in that draft.

"Fernando Martín is one of the top three players in Europe. Detlef Schrempf is better, but Arvydas Sabonis and him are just behind and we're not going to waste our time selecting a Russian," Menéndez told The New York Times.

Three more franchises had travelled to Spain to see Martín play according to the scout, who had first witnessed the Spaniard's potential in 1982.

"Fernando Martín's pick was confirmed first thing in the morning the following day, when we started negotiating the details," Paniagua says.

The Nets, who thought he would be the perfect replacement for Buck Williams, had him on a trial during camps at Chapel Hill and Princeton. Martín was surprised by some of the routines he had to adopt.

"They wake us up at 7 a.m. and we train at 8 a.m., which is something I've never done before. Then we train again in the afternoon, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.," Martín told Televisión Española's journalist Pedro Barthe. "The meals are different from what I'm used to. They make you start training without prior warm up, just with stretching. I was sent to the bench during the first game I played so that I would cool down, because starting from the bench was the role I was going to have on their team. They wanted to know whether I could react quickly."

The trial period went well, but the Nets did not offer him a guaranteed contract and Martín decided to go back to Real Madrid, where he played for another season.

"Fernando was very disappointed", says Paniagua.

Some people suggested that Antonio Díaz Miguel, the Spanish national team coach at the time, had pressured the Nets not to sign Martín, which would have turned Martín into a professional player, making him ineligible for the national squad. Back then professional players weren't allowed to participate in international tournaments.

The Nets traded Martín's rights to the Blazers in exchange for a future second round pick and Martín finally signed his first NBA contract in Madrid in 1986. The Lakers even had showed interest in him after his performance at the World Cup. Jerry West himself called Martín on the phone. Martín had to ask someone to translate what West was saying since he did not speak English.

Martín played well enough for the Blazers during their training camp at Loyola-Marymount University to earn a spot on the team.

"On the final days of the tournament, Ron Culpe, the team trainer, knocked on our door at the Embassy Suites hotel and gave us a No. 10 jersey with Martín's name on the back. I remember the feeling, it was just amazing," Paniagua recalls.

Only one detail was missing: "Fernando told me to ask the Nets if they could include the accent on his surname. His roots were very important for him," says the former agent.

The rest of the story is pretty well known. Fernando Martín played just 147 minutes in 25 games, including one playoff game. He scored 22 total points and had 28 rebounds in a season during which he missed the Spanish 'cocidos' and cold meats as he never had before.

The Blazer's coach, Mike Schuler, was relatively inexperienced, and did not take many risks—and giving minutes to European player seemed like a big risk at the time. On the day of Martín's official debut against the Seattle Supersonics, the Blazers admitted he was only sent in to play for two minutes because two Spanish journalists and a photographer had travelled to the U.S. to report on his first game.

Fernando Martín's jump into the NBA, though, helped pave the way for Spaniards to explore the same path with much greater success: "His adventure was like a trip to the moon and back in a day," Canal+'s Antoni Daimiel recalls.

"It was impossible for a European player to reach the NBA without playing in an American college first—but he did it", says Antonio Martín, Fernando's brother.

Martín is still fondly remembered by his countrymen. Last year, Pau Gasol wrote a tribute to Martín in the Spanish newspaper Marca on the 25th anniversary of his death. In the 2009 slam dunk contest, Rudy Fernandez wore a Martín Trailblazers jersey during one of his dunks. His legacy lives on.

Paco Torres was one of the very few journalists who was able to personally connect with Martín, who always distrusted the media. "He would never allow us to inquire, but he was very open if the conversation just flowed", says the former Gigantes del Basket magazine director, who has a theory about Martín: "Fernando would have been the best in whatever sport he had chosen. He was just a force of nature."