My prediction of Maksvytis' 15 candidates of the main NT camp:
Jokubaitis, Lekavicius, Grigonis, Brazdeikis, D. Giedraitis, Dimsa, Ulanovas, Butkevicius, Sirvydis, Sedekerskis, Kuzmisnkas, Sabonis, Valanciunas, Motiejunas, Tubelis
I just tried to collect players and see how hard/easy it is to make it.
It will be interesting to see if Maksvytis will exclude R. Giedraitis, but knowing his constant struggle with NT it would only be logical, specially now with D. Giedraitis and Sirvydis improvements.
Players as Kariniauskas, Dimsa, Tubelis, Bendzius will be borderliners. They may be in, may be out. I think Normantas is out of question.
I think Marciulionis and Rubstavicius (if he's available) will be invited only to reserve NT. Knowing Kazys, he will do everything to avoid players that he doesn't know and understand even if they will look very well. But if these 2 will play for the reserve, hands down they will be tortching everything around and Maksvytis will inevitably feel huge pressure to give them a chance cause BB community will see three games of reserve NT on air. I hope Maksvytis won't hesitate and give Marciulionis and Rubstavicius a chance from day 1 of main camp, if they will show how good they are.
To me it's simple. We need more defense and athleticism at 1 (so Marciulionis candidature is very important). We need more defense at 2 (so D. Giedraitis is a lock). We need more defense at 3-4 and there's Butkevicius, Ulanovas addition is huge. And we need more defense at 5, but the only chance to improve this is to expect better performance by Sabonis and to play Sedekerskis at this position more eagerly. I actually argue that NT would be a better team if only Sabonis and Sedekerskis would be played at 5 (and JV would be a third center).
If this will be the picture, we could DRAMATICALLY improve our defence. Nothing short but dramatically. When you think about it we have Marciulionis, D. Giedraitis, Butkevicius, Ulanovas, Sedekerskis, that's 5 plus defenders. Three of them are elite defenders (Marciulionis, D. Giedraitis, Butkevicius). In 2022 we had only had one plus defender Butkevicius. In 2023 only Sedekerskis. Having 5 of those and 3 elite perimeter defenders would be really substantial improvement of the NT. I hope Maksvytis understands that.
Maksvytis has 2 choices basically. One. He could simply go with the best names and that would mean that he forms purely offensive team and he tries to win it with great offense. The team would look like that:
Jokubaitis, Lekavicius
Grigonis, Brazdeikis, (R. Giedraitis)
Ulanovas, Butkevicius, Sirvydis
Sedekerskis, Kuzminskas
Sabonis, Valanciunas, Motiejunas
Second, he emphasizes the need of defense and makes the mix of offensive and defensive players.
Jokubaitis, Marciulionis, D. Giedraitis
Grigonis, Brazdeikis, Dimsa
Ulanovas, Butkevicius,
Sedekerskis, Kuzminskas,
Sabonis, Valanciunas
I would surely be the fan of second. We badly need to make our defense as tough and agile as possible. And with my mention 5 players we can do that. I would even mention Grigonis, if he will play at 3 and will want to work on it, he can be a decent defender as well, better than say Brazdeikis or Sirvydis at 3 for sure. The thing, it's very very unlikely that we can win medals with Sabonis, Jokubaitis, Grigonis, Brazdeikis (Valanciunas, Sedekerskis Ulanovas) playing primarily offensive basketball. We should build up the defense. That's our best chance to win. Good defense + good offense might be even the recipe for medals in 2024. Bad defense + good offense (2022 case) is unlikely to bring any success (we lost all game endings in 2022, it's partially on Maksvytis, but also on the lack of defensive grip).
The recipe is pretty clear. We will remain one of the best offensive teams in the world (in 2022 we were 6th with 89ppg and in 2023 8th with 89ppg). Our team actually will be offensively superior to 2022 and 2023 teams. Sabonis is better than before, Jokubaitis, Sedekerskis, Brazdeikis also better. And Grigonis the same, and JV more or less the same too (slightly declined). Besides there should be Ulanovas who would boost a offense a bit as well. So the way I see it, we should actually stay 88-91ppg kinda team, but overall I expect even slight grow of scoring potential and would hope to see us dropping 92-93ppg which would make us top 5 in Olympics. So offense will be there. The question how much can we improve our D and that's must. From good D, there would come more defensive rebounds, more steals and that would mean more easy points in transition.
If Maksvytis will be smart enough (which I don't expect anymore unfortunately), we can construct good offense + good defense kinda team. That may even give as a chance to fight for medals.
Later in some 2028 we will be competing for medals (IMO) cause we will have tremendous offensive talent with Jakucionis, prime Jokubaitis, prime Sirvydis, Rubstavcius, Buzelis, still prime Sabonis and so on. We will have not only good (as now), but absolutely elite offensive talent. With elite offense (and Slovenia kinda proved it recently) you can fight for medals even having bad defense. But you stand no chance winning medals with only good offense and band defense. That's why for 2024 NT it's a must to build good defense and I strongly suggest to have Augis, Dovis, Butke, Ule, Sedas (+ probably Dimsa) in the final unit.
I went trough the stats of 2022 and 2023 and found few interesting ones.
In 2022 we were 6th best scoring team with 89ppg, but we were not good shooting team. Only 16th spot with 33,8%. Maybe only better shooting could be enough for 2022 team to succeed (and some more defense?)?
In 2023 we also were scoring 89ppg, but we were the best shooting team in the whole WC with 42.2%.
Meaning we might see 2024 team being much superior in offense if threes will fall.
Another very interesting thing is that Lithuania was second dead last in steals in 2022 and dead LAST in 2023. We had only 4,3 steals per game in 2023 while Serbia and USA had 9 steals per game. That illustrates well that our D was crap. (In 2022 we had even lower, 3.8 stlpg).
In my opinion steals stat is underrated. It shows how good the team is defensively, how much it hustles. Deflections stats would be very handy too. We need to improve this stat. We will be controlling the boards. We were the best team in 2022 and 2023 (from serious teams) as well. But we need better legs, agility and hands at D. We need guys who can play on ball D. That's I want 5 my mentioned guys + Buzelis is he's available. Buzelis could give some benefits already with a small role too.
If Lithuania improves D. Watch out. We may be sneaky good to challenge the top tier of teams.
