Lithuanian NT 2017

[Straight forward]

Maybe , but if Seibutis played he'd shut them down, surely

Not surely, but a good chance he would look a little bit more convincing than Gecevicius looked at the defensive end, you know...

[Straight forward]

Is it so hard to accept the fact that the Greeks are just individually stronger ? nobody got outcoached compare the rosters the Greek players came out and did their thing played to their full actual potential.

Greeks are not individually stronger. It was 50/50 match-up talent wise. We basically had advantage at 5, 3 and even 4 assuming Kuzminskas rocked and Printezis only had a crazy start. Greeks had better backourt, but it doesn't make them clearly superior talent wise. We didn't play the best game to say the least. And again, Adomaitis options proved to be wrong, such things happen. Kazlauskas knew what is he doing when he cut Gecevicius and never called him back. Such players are useless in aggressive, physical knock out stage.

[LuDux]

Doomed by 3 minutes 31 seconds of Gecevicius

[Shawshank]

Adomaitis was more like buddy to players, no player was affraid of him.Good coach, good teacher,good father puts atleast little bit fear in you. He allowed players too much freedom, motiejunas going to other side of the world showed that.So ofcourse players will like adomaitis after Kazlauskas control

Kazlauskas was demanding and sometimes really hard on them, but he achieve very good results with such control.

So we need good person and liberal or tough coach that gonna do what is needed in getting max is possible from the team? Im with second option, for me better coach that sometimes will go overline than this very liberal one.Especially when we are limited tallent team

I dont question Adomaitis as tactician or hard worker, i question his weak hand , he should learn to demand more and be tougher on players.Such nonsense like motiejunas trip example cant be a part of team that prepares seriuosly.This is not some kind family picnik thing.Half of the team return from turkey with their wifes or girfriends together.

If you gonna ask moon from them only then you gonna get max out of that group of people.Adomaitis is not asking for moon that is the problem in my eyes.

[Hepcat]

Indeed. You get a lot further with a motto of "Victory or death!" than with "Maximum feasible success or a reasonable alternative".

[Straight forward]

My little conclusions after the tournament:

The times when we won something with Kalnietis as a main PG is over, IMO. He can't handle intense schedule any more, played like 36yo veteran who slows everything down, but even so gassed out rather quickly. He can't be flexible controlling the tempo simply because he is already declining physically, his defensive effort declined compared to 2013-2015 period as well. His future is veteran role player both NT and club BB. Hopefully he'll be able to adjust to this new role, concentrating on facilitating in the first place. Lekavicius is probably already a better player, way much more explosive, aggressive and there's no doubt he should be a starting PG in 2019 WC.
Grigonis is a good option 2 in the future. His defence is very solid and with time he will be able to contribute much more offensively as well. Seibutis as a defensive veteran role player is still very much needed this Olympic cycle, unless he will decline badly. We need to integrate new blood at the guard section because we are going no-where with such as Gecevicius, Milaknis and so on. New blood here is a must. The way I see things, we had to use Ulanovas at 2 as well. He wouldn't play D as bad as Gecevicius and Milaknas anyway, even against most agile guards. So in 2019 I'm waiting for one of young guns prevailing, be it Valinskas, Varnas, Kulboka, Velicka or anyone else.
This Olympic cycle belongs to Kuzminskas . He should suck most of the time at 3 and to gather some minutes at 4 as well. We should build around him even more than we did (too many times we tried to utilize bigs which doesn't work that easily in the most intense games, specially against solid opposition such as Greece). He's one of the most impressive all-arounders in Europe at the moment. Maciulis career of NT is not necessary over, but it would be a great time for him to retire. He looks gassed and out of bulldog attitude. He doesn't have the same hunger for the game. Ulanovas should step up and be an aggressive back up for Kuzminskas. Besides I think it's 1 or 2 years away from Sedekerskis threatening both of these guys, surely a big time competitor.
D-Mo might never bounch back as a big time PRO. Maybe he will and he will eventually play some great tournaments, but the patience is gone. Dude never lived up the expectations. Sabonis is big time stud in this position (as well as the light and agile center). We badly lack him. We also lacked Jankunas, but heading to the 2019 I think it's save to say Sabonis will be by far our most dominant beast at 4. Another young gun who might even be ready for 2019 (or 2010) is Ehodas. Knowing that we can use Sedekerskis at 4 as well, we will draw the young and dominant line-up complimented with one of the veterans if needed (Jankunas or D-Mo).
JV proves he's one of the most efficient and dominant centers in Europe at the moment, but he shouldn't be a corner stone player of NT. He's a great starter who can dominate the game playing under correct role. With time he will develop a midrange jumper, so all he will need to do is to run p'n'r, crushing offensive boards and hit some open jumpers. Gudaitis is solid back-up, with time will get even better and more consistent. Knowing we can comfortably throw Sabonis at 5, this position is very well covered.

To sum up, we need more dynamic backourt which can run and play D to compete with best NTs in the world at the moment. The defence is the key because we can't play mid-tempo BB emphasizing bigs at O if we can't slow down oppositions backourt. Speaking about this Olympic cycle, we need a third star player along JV and Kuzminskas and the only one who has the potential to be that soon is Sabonis . I see those 3 players and Lekavicius (because he is the one that can really cover most important position this Olympic cycle) as 4 key players. I hope coach, whoever that will be, will use different line-ups- one composed of such players as Lekavicius, Ulanovas, Kuzminskas, Sabonis and other Kalnietis, Jankunas, (maybe Maciulis), Valanciunas.

Still sticking up to prediction that next Olympic cycle will be way wealthier.

[Svajunas]

Why is everyone saying Adomaitis was Outcoached, it was the Greek players themselves who came out with some heat and put us in our place .

Well they had game plan wich worked for them. For example they always went under the screens against Kalnietis, because they knew that he was shooting low percentage. Most of our pnr plays broke off because, Kalnietis was too hesitant to shoot. Thats just one thing though, there are more Im sure.

[Shawshank]

Kalnietis wasnt that bad.He didnt played his best tournament sure,but was 3rd best player we had by big margin than 4th best player we had.Kalnietis still can be valuable 20min guard,Mantas experiece will help as alot especially when playoofs starts.1/8 we needed more veteran leadership,because younsgters and rookies was in panic.Kalnietis is playing with his head at his stage of his career and PG have to play with his head.Mantas will never dunk from free throw line as he was doing in young days,forget it, he is doing other things now.And definetely he didnt look like 36 years old veteran comon dont need to overreact.

I wouldnt be so sure about Lekavicius,he is limited tallent player and didnt run our team in any tournament so far.Its not easy to come and be starting PG.We also saw what is diffrence between group stage and playoofs our younrger bench showed very clearly.Lets see how Lekavicius will do in Panathinaikos firstly ,are you sure we wont become bench player only there?Jasikevicius will not around you know.Hopefully one day we will Jasikevicius with Lekavicius in NT reunited again.

About this Olympic cycle,imagine we have bad 2019 tournament and we have not a single medal and not even qoulife for Olympics.Because in this cycle only 3 tournaments and only 2 of them is surely.One chance we already missed it.So ofcourse next cycle cwill be better,because it will impossible to be worse.But will it be better than 2013-2016? with 2 medals and 3 semifinals? i dont think so.What Kazlauskas did that was fantastic and we gonna appreciate that only couple years later for example when we gonna watch 2020 olympic without ltu team and that can happen very easily how it looks now.

[Shawshank]

Greece federation fired Missas for making only to 1/4.We wont fire coach that made only to 1/8.So for Lithuania basketball is becoming normal not to make top8 its ok? it happend only 4th time in 25 years and coach should stay? No he shouldnt ,Jasikevicius or Kurtinaitis should be hired ! Adomaitis can finish qualification because of those fiba idiotic system,but in 2019 WC not he should coach ltu team if we want see our NT in Olympics 2020 .I strongly believe in that.

[LuDux]

These days to coach NT you have to be Guild Navigator

[R1ou]

Greece federation fired Missas for making only to 1/4.We wont fire coach that made only to 1/8.So for Lithuania basketball is becoming normal not to make top8 its ok? it happend only 4th time in 25 years and coach should stay? No he shouldnt ,Jasikevicius or Kurtinaitis should be hired ! Adomaitis can finish qualification because of those fiba idiotic system,but in 2019 WC not he should coach ltu team if we want see our NT in Olympics 2020 .I strongly believe in that.

To be fair he was a temporary solution as all who were asked prior to him refused to take over. So he wouldn't stay even if he'd win a medal.

[Miškinis]

Even though the end result is far from being acceptable, I think Adomaitis should be given a chance to prove himself. At least up until the end of the World Cup (granted that we'll get there, of course). After all, we don't really have a choice, do we?. Hopefully he'll take a pill of self criticism and fix the mistakes he has made. That's gonna be quite a task, because there were quite a few of them. The obvious one, I believe, was the inability to set up defensive schemes. Or better to say, inability to acknowledge the lack of skills of certain players (or cover this with a help from other team members). The overall selection of the squad and the distribution of the roles looked dubious as well. We have a chance to bounce back. Though, it's about time to stop looking at the names. Old horses do not help anymore. It's about time to either limit their role or replace them at all. It's a brave move, yet I believe it is at the time a necessary one.

[Hepcat]

JV proves he's one of the most efficient and dominant centers in Europe at the moment, but he shouldn't be a corner stone player of NT. He's a great starter who can dominate the game playing under correct role. With time he will develop a midrange jumper, so all he will need to do is to run p'n'r, crushing offensive boards and hit some open jumpers. Gudaitis is solid back-up, with time will get even better and more consistent. Knowing we can comfortably throw Sabonis at 5, this position is very well covered.

I'm not so impressed with Artūras Gudaitis as a center. He's neither a physically dominant giant in the tradition of centers of old like Serbia's Boban Marjanović nor does he have a three point shot. The problem is that I don't know of any young Lithuanian centers who fit either mold let alone both.

Still sticking up to prediction that next Olympic cycle will be way wealthier.

Screw the next cycle! The current goal should be the semis at the 2019 World Championships and qualifying for the 2020 Olympics.

[Shawshank]

Even though the end result is far from being acceptable, I think Adomaitis should be given a chance to prove himself. At least up until the end of the World Cup (granted that we'll get there, of course). After all, we don't really have a choice, do we?. Hopefully he'll take a pill of self criticism and fix the mistakes he has made. That's gonna be quite a task, because there were quite a few of them. The obvious one, I believe, was the inability to set up defensive schemes. Or better to say, inability to acknowledge the lack of skills of certain players (or cover this with a help from other team members). The overall selection of the squad and the distribution of the roles looked dubious as well. We have a chance to bounce back. Though, it's about time to stop looking at the names. Old horses do not help anymore. It's about time to either limit their role or replace them at all. It's a brave move, yet I believe it is at the time a necessary one.

What old horses? This 2017 was young team.2015-2016 teams was older.Our oldest player was 32 and only 3players of 12 was 30+ other 9 players was under 30.

[Miškinis]

What old horses? This 2017 was young team.2015-2016 teams was older.Our oldest player was 32 and only 3players of 12 was 30+ other 9 players was under 30.

Jonas Mačiulis, Mantas Kalnietis, Artūras Milaknis, Martynas Gecevičius.