No Sport, Just Sex after Sabonis Heart Attack

Lithuanian basketball legend Arvydas Sabonis said Tuesday he would have to limit his pleasures after suffering a heart attack a week ago, as doctors decided to release him from hospital.

"The doctors told me, 'You can't smoke, you can't drink, and you can't play basketball.' So of the things I like, only sex is left," Sabonis told Lithuanian media at the clinic in his hometown, the central city of Kaunas.

"The doctors decided this. I'm a newcomer here so I do what I'm told," he was quoted as saying by the news website lrytas.lt.

Clinic spokeswoman Egle Zemaitiene told Agence France Presse that Sabonis was to be released later Tuesday, a week after his heart attack during a training game in Kaunas.

He is to convalesce at home, with his condition set to be monitored for at least six months.

Sabonis, now 46, was inducted into the NBA's Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Considered one of the top passing centers of all time, he played seven seasons for the Portland Trail Blazers between 1995 and 2003.

He also won Olympic gold for the Soviet Union, and two bronzes for Lithuania once it returned to international competition after breaking free from five decades of Kremlin rule in 1990.

Sabonis is a household name in Lithuania, a nation of three million where basketball is often dubbed the second religion, after Catholicism.

One in 34 of the population plays the sport, according to figures from world governing body FIBA, and Lithuania's national teams are regularly among the globe's top rankers.