Ofcourse all what was bad it was butautas,all what was good in 2009 its was kurtinaitis aha
.I remember very clearly butautas many time came to kurtinaitis and were asking in game progress what to do...They both were discusiing what players use and what not its 99% .It wasnt than butautas decided and thats all.4 year ago Kurtinaitis were very skeptical about kalnietis in one intervew.Kurtinaitis and butautas never liked kalnietis,they always leave him on the beanch even in youths championship..they better use 2007 gustas 2008 prekevicius and 2009 mazutis....They took him,just because there werent anything more to take at that position and still he sitted on the bench.But when he played 10minutes against spain,he did more that mazutis in all tournament manage to do.Dont be naive ofcourse its was both coaches after discusions decisions,what player use and what not to.But ofcourse kurtinaitis now have more experience and are better coach,but all im saying dont picture black and white BECAUSE ITS NOT TRUE! Dainys isnt just Lrytas team material thats all. So if they though mazutis can help national team,dainys rytas,hmm so maybe they will think that some kind lkl player can be starting player for national team no ?
Look at the 2005 U-20 teams of lithuania,i have feeling from t here gonna come more suprises,because butautas and kurtinaitis coach those teams.Players like kavaliaukas,alijevas,jomantas,babrauskas can have a chance again to wear national team yersey,but im just guesing
Sometimes you just have to give them a shot. Petravicius was literally unknown until he was 27 years old was noticed and given a shot.
Sometimes you have to take a risk and take those mediocre players in hopes you can find someone better, sometimes you end up with Mazutis, sometimes you end up with Petravicius.
Kurtinaitis was sceptical about Kalnietis and he had a good last game in that tournament and had a great 2010 but looking back at Kalnietis career can you honestly say that Kurtinaitis was completely wrong about him? A lot of the sings he said about Kalnietis are actually valid even to this very day.
He is right now our main PG but it doesnt mean he is a good PG.
One of the reason why Saras tired so much out was because Kalnietis sucked and Saras had to play more time than he initially expected to.
Kalnietis dribble is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Thats what Kurtinaitis said about Kalnietis and he was and is right. Pocius and Seibutis are better dribbling the court than him, as Kalnietis dribbles the ball way too high. He has a very inconsistent shot, one of the reasons why opponents leave him space to shoot from distance - you he can hit a couple but miss 6 at that just as well. Its worthy to take a gamble on such player.
Kurtinaitis thought he cant shoot at all, he wasnt right in that aspect, but three years ago Kalnietis was worser at shooting than he is now, and even now you dont want to see him shoot even wide-open.
Dainys was fine. What the hell you are talking about? Did you even watch Rytas games? They took Dainys as the 3rd PG, and he was good at it. 3rd PG. Not a leader, not even a 2nd PG, a 3rd. They did not want to take Kelys as a PG because 3PG just doesnt get much time and young players need to spend their time on court, not on the bench. Dainys was for that. he played 5-8 minutes per game, sometimes in LKL he had more in bigger games less or none and he was fine with that and was ok while playing. Thats what you ask from roleplay players like Dainys.
I was perfectly fine with him playing as he was and he certainly was better Rytas material than say Prekevicius or Kestutis Marciulionis.
Jomantas was fine. Sometimes Zalgiris fans are too stupid to remember that Jomantas was actually one of the leaders of the Maciulis, Kleiza generation. It was natural to try him, just of course not at PG position. He did however stopped Navarro in the last game against Spain but whenever he went off the court Navarro went on bombing us to death. It was a funny game in that retrospect.
Some Zalgiris fans point at statistics and say Jomantas played too much forgetting that there were such situations like against Spain where he was NT's best defender and had to stay on one or another player so that he doesnt start lightening it up.
Nowadays it doesnt look like Jomantas on NT would be a great idea but back then it was fine. It was like trying Ulanovas from our U-20 team. After all Jomantas back in his youth NT days was one of the leaders together with Kleiza and Maciulis (he could score back then) he was doing fine on men basketball, so much that Sagadin put a young Jomantas in the starting line-up due to his defense. But that is what probably ruined Jomantas.
Since back in sagadin days he realized that he can get plenty of playing time by just defending and completely threw out his scoring and focused on his D. Nowadays its hard to believe that Jomantas in youth teams had 20 and more point games or in Siauliai scoring 27 or 29 was natural for him.
And that 2009 years would have not been nearly as bad for him if they did not try to make a PG out of Sf. For Kurtinaitis it worked with Eidson (it was under Kurtinaitis and not under Sireika or Trifunovic that Eidson started to shine) but never with Jomantas.
