EuroBasket 2022 Power Rankings

[Straight forward]

The problem of the Czechs are continuity. They dont have the successors to substitute their guys is already 32, Blake Shilb already 38, Sato and the others are also 30 and older. They will lose competitiveness very soon. Its not a very physical team anyway. Ginsburg did a good job on them for sure but their success story is not a very long story.

I watched LTU games very closely some time ago because I expect Turkey to face either Germany or LTU and your problem is mainly the quality of your players. Sure there are many Lithuanian Euroleague player but they are not meant to be playoff caliber player except Grigonis. Lets take the Greeks for example. Everyone knows I dont think very high on the Greek Euroleague guys but they all have played Euroleague finals some more than one. Having a PG who plays in a EL playoff team is surely precious but he is not ready to take over this team. He can contribute but he is not a Sloukas at least right now.

Technically spoken, your best two guys are not suited to play together. You cant stretch the floor, your bigs cant create for themselves (Sabonis in the low post) and you struggle a lot with a solid shooting team. JV is too slow and Sabonis did really a bad job defending. Last but not least you dont have a single guard who can defend properly. I think this hurts you the most.

Guys like Zukauskas, Bendzius, Sedekerskis, Dimsa are not NT level player. Just Butkevicius I would rely on for the future.


Slovenia has good guards without a doubt and with Doncic the best player maybe for FIBA courts but Doncic isnt enough and they wont be enough for a quality roster like France or Serbia not as long as you can clone Doncic three times.

LTU should be judged by a bit different perspective, not by names literally. Lukas Lekavicius f.e. was 13ppg kinda scorer in WC 2019 and we were close taking down both Australia and France. He should be solid in Eurobasket. Grigonis, Lekavicius, Butkevicius are in their prime (R. Giedraitis too), while Jokubaitis and Brazdeikis are very talented. This is deep backcourt for our recent standards. And actually that's were my optimism coming from. We won't need to rely on JV/Domas so primitively. Grigonis, Lekavicius, Jokubaitis, Brazdeikis can initiate creation and facilitation. This would change Lithuania's face. I don't know if that will be enough, but we won medals with worse teams on the paper. Solid chance.

Slovenia's frontline with Tobey and Cancar was just almost perfect actually. They will be force, no doubt. They can take down Serbia and France. Not a favorites against these 2, but they can do it.

[Toruko]

Lukas Lekavicius f.e. was 13ppg kinda scorer in WC 2019 and we were close taking down both Australia and France.

Turkey technically defeated the USA with Mahmutoglu who averaged 15 points and he is still trash. Lukas became the best player he could have become but he is not suitable for your backcourt.

Grigonis, Lekavicius, Butkevicius are in their prime (R. Giedraitis too), while Jokubaitis and Brazdeikis are very talented.

Nobody except Grigonis is a serious EL player. It doesnt matter if they are in their prime or not because of low ceiling.

We won't need to rely on JV/Domas so primitively. Grigonis, Lekavicius, Jokubaitis, Brazdeikis can initiate creation and facilitation.

This is good against teams like Georgia, Montenegro etc. but every team that I put in front of Lithuania has a far better 2-3-4 rotation than LTU.

lets take a look at:

Greece: Papanikolaou, Papapetrou, Giannis, Dorsey (more quality)
Italy: Fonteccio, Melli, Gallinari, Polonara (More quality)
Germany: Maxi Kleber, Isaac Bonga, Wagner brohs, Voigtmann (more quality)
Turkey: Furkan Korkmaz, Cedi Osman, Onuralp Bitim, Alperen Sengün (will mainly play PF) (more quality)

I don't know if that will be enough, but we won medals with worse teams on the paper. Solid chance.

Every team has the chance to beat any other team. There is no Spain domination anymore but looking at your roster anyone will say more or less the same. You need more quality. More of the sort Siskauskas, Kleiza, Jasikevicius etc and not Bendzius or Dimsa.

[Straight forward]

Turkey technically defeated the USA with Mahmutoglu who averaged 15 points and he is still trash. Lukas became the best player he could have become but he is not suitable for your backcourt.

I knew you will come up with this Mahmutoglu argument Lekavicius on other hand can be good again, while I wouldn't bet Mahmutoglu to repeat something like that. Lekavicius is a treat offensively. He can even go ISO at times well. He will bring energy off the bench. BTW, he never shot the three well in the NT yet, that's the reserve.

Nobody except Grigonis is a serious EL player. It doesnt matter if they are in their prime or not because of low ceiling.

Jokubaitis is. Don't forget he sunk 2 game winners in Micic and your Efes face in regular season. Plenty of other games against elite teams when he decided the outcome for Barsa. His last stretch of the season was post-injury stretch, he was only starting to come back to his own in the finals of ACB where he had few good games. Jokubaitis is a player already.

Besides, there's a good chance that Brazdeikis would be a baller in EL.

Greece: Papanikolaou, Papapetrou, Giannis, Dorsey (more quality)
Italy: Fonteccio, Melli, Gallinari, Polonara (More quality)
Germany: Maxi Kleber, Isaac Bonga, Wagner brohs, Voigtmann (more quality)
Turkey: Furkan Korkmaz, Cedi Osman, Onuralp Bitim, Alperen Sengün (will mainly play PF) (more quality)

This is highly debatable. But all 4 teams don't have the usual Lithuania's coherence, chemistry, the level of effort (hustle), winning culture (for the latter part off course Greece is very close though).

Every team has the chance to beat any other team. There is no Spain domination anymore but looking at your roster anyone will say more or less the same. You need more quality. More of the sort Siskauskas, Kleiza, Jasikevicius etc and not Bendzius or Dimsa.

I agree with that. If LTU wants to reach it's level of 00's, we still need more talent. But I see us in 2tier and I will stand for it.

[Toruko]

I knew you will come up with this Mahmutoglu argument Lekavicius on other hand can be good again, while I wouldn't bet Mahmutoglu to repeat something like that. Lekavicius is a treat offensively. He can even go ISO at times well. He will bring energy off the bench. BTW, he never shot the three well in the NT yet, that's the reserve.

Well, look at his performance in Eurobasket 17 then. He can score but his plus minus is mostly negative because he cant guard. You cant win with such guys. Every player is usable in the right team. Mahmutoglu would be a great fit for the Greeks for example because Greeks can defend but not shoot. They can afford him, we dont.

Jokubaitis is. Don't forget he sunk 2 game winners in Micic and your Efes face in regular season. Plenty of other games against elite teams when he decided the outcome for Barsa.

He did it with a great surrounding players, not with Zukauskas and Sedekerskis etc. He will have to step up and he will have good stats because he is your main decision maker but his defense is bad and considering your backcourt it will be very difficult to compete defensively. Watching your Qualifier games confirmed it. With a solid defensive guard I might have thought differently.

This is highly debatable. But all 4 teams don't have the usual Lithuania's coherence, chemistry, the level of effort (hustle), winning culture (for the latter part off course Greece is very close though).

This is a point that I could accept especially against us but I am still unsure if I want LTU or Germany. Germany has more quality but Schröder is a mess and we won all the recent games against Germany.

[Straight forward]

He did it with a great surrounding players, not with Zukauskas and Sedekerskis etc. He will have to step up and he will have good stats because he is your main decision maker but his defense is bad and considering your backcourt it will be very difficult to compete defensively. Watching your Qualifier games confirmed it. With a solid defensive guard I might have thought differently.

Jokubaitis is not that bad defender as you picture it, but we have Butkevicius. (And soon we'll have D. Giedraitis and A. Marciulionis, guards that kind bight at D end, and I want Tubelis in the frontlune, that would change things for us a lot)

Yes, I also feel that overall Lithuania is too vulnerable defensively, but I think we'll be one of the best offensive teams in Eurobasket and with extra hustle we can still come up with solid defence. The same Grigonis when he wants to, he can play solid D.

[Toruko]

Jokubaitis is not that bad defender as you picture it, but we have Butkevicius. (And soon we'll have D. Giedraitis and A. Marciulionis, guards that kind bight at D end, and I want Tubelis in the frontlune, that would change things for us a lot)

Jokubaitis is a cotton soft defender. This is as if I would claim Korkmaz is a good defender or Tuncer. One is bad the second one is horrible. Butkevicius is not a bad defender but for CL standards

Yes, I also feel that overall Lithuania is too vulnerable defensively, but I think we'll be one of the best offensive teams in Eurobasket and with extra hustle we can still come up with solid defence. The same Grigonis when he wants to, he can play solid D.

I would rather say you are average offensively. Its true that you scored a lot of points but your group was weak as hell. Slovenia is a cotton soft team. Venezuela has 0 bigs. Korea cant be taken seriously. Poland has a 20 year old guy and a washed up undersized big. Not much of a competition. Slovenia is an offensive team, Turkey, Italy and even a Latvia with Porzingis but surely not LTU.

[Straight forward]

Jokubaitis is a cotton soft defender. This is as if I would claim Korkmaz is a good defender or Tuncer. One is bad the second one is horrible. Butkevicius is not a bad defender but for CL standards

Disagree. He is pretty beefy guards generally and probably will get even a little bigger in upcoming years. He absorbs the contact willingly. His problem is that he doesn't have super good lateral quickness and he still sometimes loses focus. So super agile American guards off course can be an issue. But overall his motor is good, often great, and he doesn't mind to bang.

I would rather say you are average offensively. Its true that you scored a lot of points but your group was weak as hell. Slovenia is a cotton soft team. Venezuela has 0 bigs. Korea cant be taken seriously. Poland has a 20 year old guy and a washed up undersized big. Not much of a competition. Slovenia is an offensive team, Turkey, Italy and even a Latvia with Porzingis but surely not LTU.

We'll see. Next FIBA window (August) already will be very interesting. Likely Lithuania playing official game against France prior Eurobasket. IMO, LTU 2021<<<2022. We'll have better roster and we will have long preparation. Such team as Lithuania highly benefits from preparation. We dig for chemistry willingly and patiently. In 2021 we didn't have preparation and solid coaching. Slovenia, which is not soft team by any means (no way, it's pretty pesky team actually), didn't need preparation because of Doncic. We should be much improved version of 2019. I expect better decisions how to use JV and Domas too. They already know each other better and feels what's working what's not.

[Toruko]

Yeah they played very hard on you because it was the final game for the Olympics but normally they are soft. They had the hardest center Europes with Gasper Vidmar but he is history.

My prediction is that youll end the group fourth.

[Joško Poljak Fan]

Yeah they played very hard on you because it was the final game for the Olympics but normally they are soft. They had the hardest center Europes with Gasper Vidmar but he is history.

My prediction is that youll end the group fourth.

Blažič, Zoran Dragič, Edo Murič, Nikolič... what's soft about them? Add Tobey, Dimec or my grandma instead of Vidmar for that matter and this would still be one of the most feisty lineups in eurobasket.
Especialy the first 3 must be on some "most annoying defenders to play against" lists, c'mmon...

[Shawshank]

Yeah they played very hard on you because it was the final game for the Olympics but normally they are soft. They had the hardest center Europes with Gasper Vidmar but he is history.

My prediction is that youll end the group fourth.

Listen we know well that normal Slovenia mentally is soft we beat them up in close games for 2 decades .

But Doncic is anything but soft. As I remember he is half Serbian right?

That dude is top 5 player in the world and he organise them open shot after open shot and scores himself like 25pts with like 14 assist .

Those Slovenian shooters feels comfortable because they know they will get those good looks in every game with him.

To beat that Luka orchestra France full loaded roster needed like 7 nba players, Decolo and Fournier go for 20+pts both and still have luck in ending to win by 1 pts...

Listen that Luka and Slovenian shooters are for real and incredibly difficult to defend them.

They don't even want to be tough inside their naturalised players shows that, they get what direction basketball is going.

[Nemanja95]

Greece and Lithuania should be contender for gold medal, what doesnt happened many years ago. Last years dominant nt like France, Serbia and Slovenia many things are under question marks. So, it looks like rarely equalized list of contenders. Always there is possibility for big surprise like Italy or Turkey to win. If I dont wrong, until medium July there would preliminary squads of every nt, afterwards we can consider closer.

[Toruko]

Listen we know well that normal Slovenia mentally is soft we beat them up in close games for 2 decades .

But Doncic is anything but soft. As I remember he is half Serbian right?

He is half Serbian half Slovenian but with soft I wasnt referring to the mental part. Generally spoken guys like Muric, Cancar, Blazic are not very tough on defense but they did a good job against you. Doncic doesnt do much on defense either but offensively he is of course the best guy you can have. On the other hand if you live with your shot you also die with it. On a day the shots dont fall its most probably over.

You dont need to have 7 NBA guys etc. You just have to play smart. LTU had also a realistic chance to win the game against Slo but you had the wrong game plan. We dont need to act like this Slovenian team is Spain of 2006 - 2015.

[Killer Bob]

He is half Serbian half Slovenian but with soft I wasnt referring to the mental part. Generally spoken guys like Muric, Cancar, Blazic are not very tough on defense but they did a good job against you. Doncic doesnt do much on defense either but offensively he is of course the best guy you can have. On the other hand if you live with your shot you also die with it. On a day the shots dont fall its most probably over.

You dont need to have 7 NBA guys etc. You just have to play smart. LTU had also a realistic chance to win the game against Slo but you had the wrong game plan. We dont need to act like this Slovenian team is Spain of 2006 - 2015.

Slovenia was never soft, problem was that they never could put all the best players together on the court.

If rumours that Goran is reconsidering his decision is true, he's suddenly playing 3 games instead of 1, I would put Slovenia as favourites.

Slovenia was a class better team than Lithuania, which had home court advantage. And we all know how important is home court advantage in basketball.

[Toruko]

Slovenia was never soft, problem was that they never could put all the best players together on the court.

If rumours that Goran is reconsidering his decision is true, he's suddenly playing 3 games instead of 1, I would put Slovenia as favourites.

Slovenia was a class better team than Lithuania, which had home court advantage. And we all know how important is home court advantage in basketball.

Slovenia was in front yes at least most of the time but till end the third quarter everything was possible. It was the wrong game plan, nothing else. The difference in strength was not that big. LTU had just a stupid game plan thats all.

[Straight forward]

Slovenia was a class better team than Lithuania, which had home court advantage. And we all know how important is home court advantage in basketball.

Nah, this argument is completely lame. Not for Lithuania at least. We choked both times we played big games at home. 2011 and 2021. The pressure is enormous, too high. People from non basketball countries can't really understand. We have like 2,5mil population, but we have like 15 basketball podcasts. Media is all over, people read, players read, basketball is a big thing here. We were missing freakin' free throws against Slovenia, it was more than clear that it is nerves. It was more than obvious that home court is contra-productive for us. And we always played better outside Lithuania, always. Slovenia was off course better, but you can thank Lithuania for hosting qualification cause it is one of the factors why you had such big lead. I would forbid hosting anything for Lithuania for 2 decades at least. We need medals.