Lithuania NT 2009

[Black Urum]

The fact that Euro ball specialists like me (NOT!) don't even know Klanietis (poor copy of Kalnietis?) and Mazutis (hope he is not as 'thick' and 'slow' as mazut) say it all I think...

[TalkBasket]

lol, will have that in mind.



Janavicius is now with U20 squad. He's not ready for the men's NT yet in my opinion.

[TalkBasket]

Butautas picked 5 players from the B squad that will join the main training camp. They are Mantas Kalnietis, Giedrius Gustas, Andrius Mazutis, Renaldas Seibutis and Mindaugas Katelynas.



Those are the obvious choices except for Gustas who doesn't deserve to be even in the B squad. Of course he was picked because he is point guard but his performances were terrible.

[TalkBasket]

Butautas decided to cut Seibutis, Katelynas and Gustas. Even though we desperately need point guards but I'd pick Seibutis over Mažutis. We need to think about the future. Seibutis would get very valuable experience if he was included in the final squad or at least if he played in the preparation games.



In the end I hope that there won't be any favouritism by Butautas to Mažutis.



http://www.talkbasket.net/news/lithuania...-1702.html

[Black Urum]

via http://www.talkbasket.net

European champions Russia visited Panevezys to face bronze medalists Lithuania in one of the last preparation games before Eurobasket in Poland. Although both teams should be close to their best form, the game didn't live up to the expectations.



Mindaugas Lukauskis opened the scoring with a three pointer to please the crowd of his home town. This was followed by a 5-0 run made by Russia as the visitors took the lead. Turnovers are becoming a trademark of Lithuanian national team and this game was no different. The hosts managed to turn the ball over 12 times in the first quarter and yet were able take the lead 16-15 right before the end of the first quarter.



The second quarter was a slight improvement for the home side. Lithuania won the quarter 21-11 and left the court for the half time break with an 8 point advantage.



Reigning European champions were not going to give as they started the third quarter with a 6-0 run thanks to 6 straight points from Vitaliy Fridzon. Russia took the lead in the middle of the third quarter but late comeback from Lithuanians tied the game at 52 before the final period.



Lithuania earned a 7 point lead at the start of the fourth quarter. Even though Russians came closer and the gap was reduced to 3 points. However, the hosts held on their lead to win a low scoring game 66-61.



66 - Lithuania - (16+21+15+14): Darjus Lavrinovic 15, Ksystof Lavrinovic 13, Robertas Javtokas 11, Linas Kleiza 6, Matas Kalnietis 6, Tomas Delininkaitis 5, Simas Jasaitis 5, Mindaugas Lukauskis 3, Jonas Maciulis 2.



61 - Russia - (18+11+23+9): Sergey Bykov 17, Vitaliy Fridzon 14, Sergey Monya 10, Tymofey Mazgov 9, Anton Ponkrashov 5, Kelly McCarty 3, Dmitry Sokolov 2.

[kobimel]

Very impressive win for Lithuania over Spain, 94-72...almost payback for their 26 point loss to the Spaniards in Seville.

[TalkBasket]

The above post was the only positive thing about Lithuanian NT this summer. And since Eurobasket is over for us the conclusions can be drawn. Butautas killed the team totally. To me the worst thing to see was that even after all those mistakes we still had chances to rise but the bald guy was blind or simply stubborn.



The roots of all these problems are in Lithuanian Basketball Federation (LKF). With Garastas as LKF president we can't expect positive changes in the future. The old man should have retired years ago. But instead he holds his position in any way he can. He's even prepared to do damage to his direct or indirect opponents. The best and at the same time the most shameful example is Garastas's effort to nto let Sarunas Marciulionis win FIBA Europe's presidential elections. As a result of that we have almost no real influence on FIBA or FIBA Europe when other basketball countries do have as well as some basketball-wise exotic countries do. Personally I can't stand any type of corruption or the games behind the scenes so that wasn't what I meant when I wrote "influence on FIBA".



Garastas is in conflict with some of the top coaches and former players in Lithuania. Among them is Jonas Kazlauskas (that's why he won't be our head coach for a long time), Antanas Sireika, Sarunas Marciulionis, Zydrunas Ilgauskas etc. So why is Garastas holds LKF president's seat? Because he has "the right" people around him. And he is re-elected almost unilaterally. The fans hoped that after the fiasco in Poland LKF would make inside changes. You wish!



The head coach of NT is selected in a public contest. The candidates have to prepare the program for the NT, their vision and a plan. At first glance it looks like a good system for selecting the best coach. However all of the above requirements mean little because the person whom LKF likes best is chosen. It was known that Butautas will be the winner way before it was officially announced. The name of his father (legendary player) surely helped.



When Lithuania finished 7th in WC 2006 in Japan, Garastas criticised Sireika heavily and he did that before WC too. In 2006 we were ranked 4th in the world and LKF intentionally set the aim for NT to be among top 4 teams in WC. Even though our team was even weaker than it is this year. We played what looked like horrible basketball (but it was quite good compared to this year) and Sireika refused to resign and claimed that the aims set by LKF were impossible to reach and he got fired. Sireika had to resign for another reason in my opinion. Simply because our stars refused to play for NT until he was head coach. Even if he felt that he was right it had to be done for the sake of NT. I told this story because this year when our NT simply humiliated themselves and coach's mistakes were obvious to everyone, Garastas could only politely say that there some mistakes though Butautas didn't do anything horrible.



Garastas is not going anywhere while he's alive so what can we expect? It would seem logical that the whole coaching staff should resign after such failure. Interestingly enough Rimas Kurtinaitis who's an assistant coach of Butautas made almost no comments during Eurobasket. He was very unusual. But if you look a little bit deeper it makes sense. Already before Eurobasket Kurtinaitis said that he would love to be a head coach of NT in the future. Could he get a better chance than now? And if you ask me I bet that Kurtinaitis will be the new head coach.



Now about the mistakes of the head coach. It all started with the selection of the team. Although there was a B team formed of the candidates to make the first team it seems that Butautas had his final 12-man list even before preparation started. The first shock is that Mazutis was selected to the final squad. A player who played in Latvian league and has no top level basketball experience. But more importantly he's way below average speaking about his level of play. But he still made it to the NT! Wait a minute, he was with Butautas in ASK Riga. Ah, that makes sense.



Other players who were better and played at a higher level were not even given a chance. But the fans thought - ok, he can take Mazutis if he wants, he would still be the 12th player on the squad. Nope. Here comes another shock. Mazutis is our starting PG! A player who does nothing in offence. And I mean absolutely nothing. The teams plays very ugly basketball. You would never guess that it was Lithuania if you didn't see the green jerseys. Kalnietis was clearly the best PG and there was no doubt he would spend the most time on the court. Especially after having the best season in his career. Yet another shock - Kalnietis is the 12th player. He's 4th option at PG. A player with several years in Euroleague is worse than Mazutis, Jomantas and Delininkaitis at PG position! And what Kurtinaitis said during a video conference before Eurobasket? He said that Kalnietis is good only in Zalgiris's chaotic style of play and that Mazutis does what he is told to do excellently! He also added some more negative comments towards Kalnietis. What we see? Kalnietis is warming the bench while the sleeping team on the court looks hopeless. And even if Butautas puts him on the court he is substituted after one minute.



Butautas is a defensive minded coach and that alone is a bad thing for our NT as we have players who are the most dangerous when they play fast. The bald guy made some "great" tactics during the summer and promised to surprise his opponents. A coach who has worked with such European giants as Siauliai, ASK Riga and now Donetsk is certainly a top level coach. How to explain his tactics in a few words? We defend very tough and use double team in every possession even though it gives us absolutely nothing and the other team has open shots. Offence? There was none. Well, we played with 4 players against 5. That's something new indeed. Butautas should register this tactic as his own invention. The players were slow. There was no useful ball movement and it was slow. The players were simply passing the ball in the perimeter or putting it despite anything to the center under the basket. Thanks to such ugly offence, we almost never got open shots. The other teams had no trouble our players as they were walking around the court. Most of the possessions lasted for almost 20 seconds ending with a hopeless random shot.



Everyone who has any deeper basketball understanding saw this. The fans made comments criticising Butautas's tactics and making suggestions during the whole summer. But the coach saw no mistakes and kept saying that the game will get better and that there's still time to improve. Instead, with Mazutis becoming the star of the team we played worse and worse.



It took 3 losses in 4 games in Eurobasket when our situation became nearly hopeless for Butautas to realize that Kalnietis is not such a poor player as he first thought. Kalnietis played 17 minutes in a hopeless loss against Slovenia for the last 17 minutes and scored 15 points. He was the top scorer in the team. Maciulis had 14. They even laughed saying that there's something wrong with the team if the 11th and the 12th player in the squad are the top scorers.



Kalnietis started the game against Spain and finally we saw something that could be called basketball. We had a 9-point lead after the first quarter. And there's was some hope. After all the criticism by the media and the fans Butautas finally admitted his mistakes (not publicly of course)? Not exactly. Kalnietis got injured after 2 minutes in the second half and asked for a substitution. Certainly Delininkaitis or at least Jomantas is coming on? Nope. It's Mazutis! We missed him so much during the first quarter. And he didn't disappoint us. Spain makes a 9-0 run and Mazutis goes back on the bench. Then 14 more unanswered points by Spain and even the gap looks manageable, the game is already lost. Spanish players got the chance to feel the game and our game was distracted by uncountable number of substitutions by Butautas (another trademark). Kalnietis was injured and didn't come back and we lost as expected.



Today against Serbia we had no Kalnietis and Jasaitis. Butautas finally put a lineup that all of the fans were saying should look like (except Kalnietis). What happened? Again we played something that can be called basketball for almost entire game. Mazutis played only 5 minutes.



Now I must say that I don't blame Mazutis at all. It's not his fault that the coach 1) picked him to the team which is way above his level, 2) the coach kept him on the court for a long time and made him a starting PG. Mazutis did all he could but the thing is that can do very little at this level. Exactly - little (that's what his surname means in Lithuanian by the way).



Butautas easily made the largest amount of substitutions in Eurobasket for sure. Every time a player felt the game he was substituted with another player who did crap. It looked as if the players were so exhausted that they needed a substitution every few minutes. However, his favourite players were kept on the court at any cost. Kleiza was one of biggest disappointments of NT though he spent lots of time on the court. Lavrinovic bros were bad as well. It's funny that Olympiacos paid millions to Kleiza in order to sign him as their starting PF but he was only used as SF in NT this year (except of few minutes) despite the poor performance of Lavrinovic twins.



Basically all the changes that were clearly visible to all the fans were impossible to see for Butautas. It looked as if he had a plan written on paper and he only looked at it. After every loss journalists were asking Butautas what happened with the team and he kept saying that he has no idea. Would you believe that?



Speaking about the future I hope that FIBA gives us a wild card and we pay in Turkey next year. We certainly deserve it. In my opinion the qualification to WC should be based purely on sporting results but since the rules are different they should not ignore what Lithuania has done in the past years.



As far as the team is concerned I believe that it should include the best players available. Garastas already made a comment saying that he will announce soon the players who should not play for NT anymore. NT is not a place for a player to grow. Of course it gives lots of experience to the player but the club is the place where the player should make progress. B team could be a solution here. The players that considered future replacements of our stars should play in B team and train with the main team. If they are better than the others then of course they should make it to the NT but they should not be put there in advance. What's the point of saying a young inexperienced team to any championship and return home with 0 wins? Will those 3 or more games make them better so that they will fight for the medals next year? No!

[TalkBasket]

Rimas Kurtinaitis said to the media that he's leaving NT together with Butautas but didn't rule out the possibility of taking a head coach position if he is offered that. Though he said that he consider the offer very seriously before making a decision. Since, according to Garastas, the new head coach will be chosen in March I have no doubt that Kurtinaitis will be more willing to coach NT again.



His interview was interesting to read. Kurtinaitis said that he as the one who suggested Mazutis to Butautas. He also admitted that Seibutis and Jankunas should have been included in the final squad. And most importantly he said that Kalnietis should have been the main PG without any doubts. Kurtinaitis also said that our players are very weak psychologically and after a loss against Turkey the team any self confidence. How can players that play in the top clubs in Europe and have many years of experience be so weak psychologically? Honestly, I agree with such statement because that's the problem not only of this NT but of Lithuanian basketball in general. There are some positive exceptions though. But the mistakes were made before the preparation started and results in Eurobasket were logical consequence.

[Black Urum]

Wow, Kurtinaitis understood what I have been telling in this thread all along, that Kalnietis should be the starting PG.

[suricata]

the only pg actually. mazutis shouldn't have made it in the team

[rikhardur]

Kurtinaitis would be the best option imo. He's not very experienced and does not have a big curriculum, but what he did last season can't be attributed to luck.