You were telling same storries how 1984-1986 guards was very limited and predicting how much better upcomming guards will be ... now in 10 years was only 2 good guards ?
I was. My prediction that the declining trend - Marciulionis, Kurtinaitis > Jasikevicius, Siskauskas > Kalnietis, Seibutis - had to end with Kalnietis, Seibutis (the bar is not high), but today we can conclude that it didn't happen, it continued with > Grigonis, Lekavicius. My point was that bb country as Lithuania can't be mediocre for many decades, specially when we had elite backcourt players for many decades previously - Paulauskas, Jovaisa, Chomicius, Kurtinaitis, Marciulionis, Jasikevicius, Siskauskas, Macijauskas and even Kalnietis was playing like elite guard in NT. It's like 4-5 decades in a row. I don't believe we can settle without elite backcourt players for upcoming 4 decades after having such historical data. Elite players should come.
21yo Jokubaitis is playing well in Barselona. 23yo Brazdeikis overall had a nice EB for his age. I still believe we will brake this declining trend this decade and will have something better than Kalnietis, Seibutis duo in the guard line (IMO, we will have the best depth of guards historically).
Those 1984-1986 player were better in winning basketball games and it wasnt because of basketball tallent.It was because they were very strong in other elements.
To be elite at basketball raw tallent is only 25%. Without strong body,strong mentality,smart brain and winners character...just basketball tallent will let you be like eurocup player.
Best players now have strong combination of all elements because they needed to beat ridiculous competion to become what they become. Just physical tallent and skill is not good enough anymore.
Players have to have everything in one body to be elite now and going further.
Thats why all those guessing games is useless.
Npbody knows what kinda character,what brain those upcomming kids will have.How they will handle pressure and all those things.
Is one thing to guess those ridiculous athletes from nba where even blind can see they are special/freaks ,but try to guess white non freakish athletic dudes careers good luck
With that I more or less agree. But it's not easier with NBA kids too. Many athletic, talented kids busted. And why wouldn't new gutsy players with great characters re-appear? We'll see. IMO, our BB school is very spot on to develop "right characters".
You predicting how much future will be better as always
History somehow tells us it wont.With every decade is getting worse and worse NT result wise. Because competion getting better and better and with very limited resources of 3million population compare to opponnets to win medal will be harder and harder.
Its not jungle times anymore like till 90s with basketball academies and so on. Most countries have similiar basketball schools now and if one country has 3 millions and other 20million to find diamonds guess who gonna find more?
Untill ltu basketball will have elite guard again by that point ltu basketball wont have elite bigs anymore most likely and so on. To win medal you need both at same time. In other word we need golden generation that elite players would be born in max +- 3-4 years time frame.
It wont work if elite big is born in 1992 and elite guard in 2000.Those generation dont have same ready to win now period.
My prediction now is that we are going to be better in 20's than we were in 10's (even early version), but the competition will be tougher. With that I agree, but wouldn't overemphasize that. Was Spain 2019 and 2022 super unbelievably stacked with talent to win it all? Hell no! Nor was was Argentina in 2019 to make a great run. Simply those teams head the right pieces and great team concept/working ethics/coaching. Specially 2022 Spain was nothing special. They didn't have a single world class star. Just had elite PG by European standards, couple of great role players (Willy, Garuba, Rudy and such) and, BOOM!, they have everything they need to win.
Despite the decline we had competitive team. With more luck maybe we could talk more optimistically about 2017-2022 stretch even today (remembering all these close 2019 and 2022 games against elite opponents). And I think we can have way better rosters in 2023-2030 compared to 2017-2022.
Regarding the need of elite big we have to remember that Sabonis is 26yo and most likely will be available for the rest of the decade. Besides, in 00's we had no elite bigs, but it was golden generation. We had good defensive bigs as role players - Javtokas, E. Zukauskas. Our frontline with
Tubelis, Krivas, Murauskas (+ Sabonis) should be superior to 00's, IMO. At least I tend to think so. All three marked players are NBA borderliners.
Basically I agree that it's harder and harder to compete, but it doesn't mean we can't have a great generation coming. We still have much bigger passion for the game and advantages that only bb nations have. Look at our Youth results this summer. We were second best NT after Spain in Europe.
D. Giedraitis, A. Tubelis, Sirvydis, A. Marciulionis, Blazevic.