The National Basketball Association had virtually no relationship with FIBA when Mr. Stankovic requested a meeting with the N.B.A.’s commissioner at the time, David Stern, in the mid-1980s, during the latter years of the Cold War. “His goal was very much to unify the world of basketball,” Russ Granik, a former N.B.A. deputy commissioner, said of Mr. Stankovic in a phone interview.