Mr. Stankovic told N.B.A. officials about his vision of having the best players in the world participate in major FIBA events, Mr. Granik said. “It wasn’t ready to happen yet,” he said, “but he wanted to start working toward that.” He added, “We were kind of surprised by all this, coming from him, because we’d always been told that they don’t want N.B.A. players in their events — they want to keep their world separate.”