Jonas Valančiūnas thread

[Shawshank]

I hate when people searches for excuses...Valanciunas sucked badly in Olympics and first of all it was obviuos its mental break down,its on him...The only our nba players have no right to look so bad in main tournament ! He had same coach and same teammates in 2015 too...that not the problem.He didnt believe in himself shooting 38% and opponenets always double teammed him and he didnt find open people ( or those people wasnt making open shots).In fiba game playing Valanciunas together with Sabonis is bad idea.Neither of them can make open middle range shot,so both opponenets C and Pf and staying inside and its very hard to score inside...In these days fiba game ( nba too) Pf have to strech the floor and shoot 3pointer,but not play 2 center type players together.

About Valanciunas pikenroll defence i dont even want to talk...total fiasco... and we will have and had this problem with that always with Jonas.He just dont read the game and run like robot after the guard without any thinking...Hopefully with age and when gets smarter he will able to hide atleast to some degree it,because entire europe already knows Valanciunas cant play pikenroll defence at all and thats is FIBA tournaments MAIN teams OFFENCE...

Jonas needs to dominate in offence like 2015,if he is not doing that,he cant stay on the floor in fiba game.And he surely can dominate in offence and hopefully he will!

[CoachZ]

There might be a small point on the way he was used, but it's much more on JV than the coach. It's not scheme's fault when you:

- Can't defend worth a shit and are constantly out of position. He was destroyed by pretty much anyone inside. Also saying that this is due to the fact that FIBA doesn't have a defensive 3 seconds and he keeps going out of paint is also kind of stupid. If you can't defend in FIBA rules, you sure can't defend in NBA. Since FIBA defense is way, way easier for bigs.
- Can't pass. This was always the biggest problem with him, even in NBA. He can't pass out of the double team and this is WHY people are double teaming him ALL THE TIME. They limit his offense + off. rebounding and the ball doesn't go outside to skill positions. This is why he is not getting enough touches in NBA and why he didn't in this tournament. If the ball is going to get stuck all the time, then it is not going to go inside.
- You can't expect to play at a high level and get a lot of looks when you turn the ball over. He was often making offensive fouls, turnovers and giving away possessions. If you factor that in with all the things that went bad on defense and passing out of the double team, it is quite normal that his touches were reduced.

I agree with the statement that he works best if a Stretch PF is next to him so he gets room in the paint and they can't double him so much. Still he is not helping himself with that broken jumper (it used to be a much better form, now it looks like someone taking a soccer throw in) and inability to pass. In general, lack of awareness, passing and basketball IQ are keeping him from becoming a dominant center. The bad thing is that the awareness and basketball IQ often you either have or don't have. Rarely someone develops them at 25 years old. His post moves, strength and rebounding are elite already. Still he leaves much to be desired for that next step. The bad thing is that he is already a type of center that is falling out of fashion in NBA.

[LuDux]

Last night I had a dream that JV was different compared to last years because he had injury recently and played without physical preperation. Probably something I ate

[Straight forward]

- Can't defend worth a shit and are constantly out of position. He was destroyed by pretty much anyone inside. Also saying that this is due to the fact that FIBA doesn't have a defensive 3 seconds and he keeps going out of paint is also kind of stupid. If you can't defend in FIBA rules, you sure can't defend in NBA. Since FIBA defense is way, way easier for bigs.

He is a good/solid post defender when it comes to iso matchups, one on one to be fair with him. Also in NBA only few teams are freakishly good at pick and roll and at FIBA it's way more common, so for him it's not easier to play in FIBA as pick and roll defence is his weakness. Overall it's way easier for him in NBA because there's more space in the paint, no-one doubles him because he still can pass back (even if not perfectly) to Raptors' main scorers. JV was lost generally and lacked confidence so eventually all aspects of his game looked worse than they are. He surely lacking passing ability and reading the game ability, but he's not that bad as he looked at Olympics.

[CoachZ]

He is a good/solid post defender when it comes to iso matchups, one on one to be fair with him. Also in NBA only few teams are freakishly good at pick and roll and at FIBA it's way more common, so for him it's not easier to play in FIBA as pick and roll defence is his weakness. Overall it's way easier for him in NBA because there's more space in the paint, no-one doubles him because he still can pass back (even if not perfectly) to Raptors' main scorers. JV was lost generally and lacked confidence so eventually all aspects of his game looked worse than they are. He surely lacking passing ability and reading the game ability, but he's not that bad as he looked at Olympics.

I was speaking of the tournament in the Olympics. Not in general. He is a good ISO and man defender in general. Not great, but good. In the olympics he was bad.

[Straight forward]

JV with career high 32pts, 11 boards in 35min versus Pistons. Nice to see this after Olympic slump. It sucks he didn't perform for NT as he can, but it's only one tournament, best performances in the NT only ahead of him.

[auris1]

JV with career high 32pts, 11 boards in 35min versus Pistons. Nice to see this after Olympic slump. It sucks he didn't perform for NT as he can, but it's only one tournament, best performances in the NT only ahead of him.

Game of his life ,only to be overshadowed by DeRosan's performance , who played ,especially in a third quarter , phenomenally . That was really something to see and admire, I have to say .
Still, Jonas did no harm to his self esteem . Fingers crossed he can keep up with that level .

[Straight forward]

Game of his life ,only to be overshadowed by DeRosan's performance , who played ,especially in a third quarter , phenomenally . That was really something to see and admire, I have to say .
Still, Jonas did no harm to his self esteem . Fingers crossed he can keep up with that level .

Casey said his defensive positioning improved. If this dude said something positive about JV's defence, it must be absolutely treated as an event. Offensively he always was a beast and now Raptors doesn't have much if any substitutions for him. Only refs, small ball or absolute ignoring can stop him from great year, but if he'll consistently get 30 minutes he'll have a nice season stats line. We can only speculate whatever happened to him this summer. Slow rounding into the shape after the injury in the PO? Too short brake between PO and OG? Loss of the focus? Mental, motivational issues? Maybe all together. However, great first game! We never seen that kind of intensity in OG surely. Sorry Boban! -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OktOrNv4G1k

[auris1]

Casey said his defensive positioning improved. If this dude said something positive about JV's defence, it must be absolutely treated as an event. Offensively he always was a beast and now Raptors doesn't have much if any substitutions for him. Only refs, small ball or absolute ignoring can stop him from great year, but if he'll consistently get 30 minutes he'll have a nice season stats line. We can only speculate whatever happened to him this summer. Slow rounding into the shape after the injury in the PO? Too short brake between PO and OG? Loss of the focus? Mental, motivational issues? Maybe all together. However, great first game! We never seen that kind of intensity in OG surely. Sorry Boban! -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OktOrNv4G1k

I was a big fan of Boban since the time he played for Zalgiris . Just check my posts in case you think i am lying . But - 7m a year? Never that much .

[madmax]

Casey said his defensive positioning improved. If this dude said something positive about JV's defence, it must be absolutely treated as an event. Offensively he always was a beast and now Raptors doesn't have much if any substitutions for him. Only refs, small ball or absolute ignoring can stop him from great year, but if he'll consistently get 30 minutes he'll have a nice season stats line. We can only speculate whatever happened to him this summer. Slow rounding into the shape after the injury in the PO? Too short brake between PO and OG? Loss of the focus? Mental, motivational issues? Maybe all together. However, great first game! We never seen that kind of intensity in OG surely. Sorry Boban! -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OktOrNv4G1k

you don't have to be a genius to figure this out really...
Lithuanian NT doesn't have s SINGLE quality point guard on their roster. Yes, you read it right, not a single one. And in case you're wondering about Kalnietis, he's a 2 way guard first and foremost and as a PG he creates only chaos on the floor. Now Raptors have not one, but 2 all star level guards on their roster - Lowry and Derozan. The difference is like a night and day here - these two guys know how to pass the ball into hot spots for JV and they don't turn it over either. Coupled with a fact that spacing in NBA game is much more fluid than in cramped FIBA ball, you get these kind of performance fluctuations...

[Straight forward]

you don't have to be a genius to figure this out really...
Lithuanian NT doesn't have s SINGLE quality point guard on their roster. Yes, you read it right, not a single one. And in case you're wondering about Kalnietis, he's a 2 way guard first and foremost and as a PG he creates only chaos on the floor. Now Raptors have not one, but 2 all star level guards on their roster - Lowry and Derozan. The difference is like a night and day here - these two guys know how to pass the ball into hot spots for JV and they don't turn it over either. Coupled with a fact that spacing in NBA game is much more fluid than in cramped FIBA ball, you get these kind of performance fluctuations...

First of all he simply sucked. He blew even great easy situations to score, to be aggressive, decisive. He was simply bad, out of shape. Was it primarily physical or metal issues, I don't know, but he was simply bad. That's the main thing. Even if Lithuanian NT never could utilize him very well, he dominated in 2014 and 2015, so it's about him in the first place, not NT. However, I agree, and I said it already that NT should try harder to make right plays to make JV's and other bigs life easier.

[Dreamcatcher]

I think it would be a good idea for JV to miss next Eurobasket.

[Straight forward]

I think it would be a good idea for JV to miss next Eurobasket.

Don't think so. If you're healthy and good to go you should play. PRO career is too short to take that kind of random decisions. If a player is injured than it's reasonable. JV proved that he can play in the NT and progress every season club career wise. Besides, Eurobasket starts basically in September. Decent amount of rest after the season.

[madmax]

First of all he simply sucked. He blew even great easy situations to score, to be aggressive, decisive. He was simply bad, out of shape. Was it primarily physical or metal issues, I don't know, but he was simply bad. That's the main thing. Even if Lithuanian NT never could utilize him very well, he dominated in 2014 and 2015, so it's about him in the first place, not NT. However, I agree, and I said it already that NT should try harder to make right plays to make JV's and other bigs life easier.

players of his talent and abilities don't start looking like total scrubs on the court unless there is a very good reason for this...and it was obvious that reason was his teammates' inability to get him the ball in the right spots. He was visibly frustrated all tournament long and was waving his arms in desperation all the time. When he starts doing that, you know the atmosphere within the team is shit...no wonder we looked and played miserably. I mostly blame the coach here anyway, so I'm with you on this

[Straight forward]

players of his talent and abilities don't start looking like total scrubs on the court unless there is a very good reason for this...and it was obvious that reason was his teammates' inability to get him the ball in the right spots. He was visibly frustrated all tournament long and was waving his arms in desperation all the time. When he starts doing that, you know the atmosphere within the team is shit...no wonder we looked and played miserably. I mostly blame the coach here anyway, so I'm with you on this

I don't blame coach in the first place. It's on JV. I actually don't blame Kazlauskas at all because I don't know a single Lithuanian specialist who could utilize bigs better. We don't have that kind of tradition, even if we had Sabonis, very often he was moving at the 3 points line and he played very Instinctively, he didn't need particular plays to be effective. JV doesn't have that kind of IQ and skills as Sabas had, so he needs certain environment to dominate. While I recently followed a lot of NBA, I've noticed things which I don't see in Europe, how they use different plays to set a post player, look at 0:30 in this video what kind of smart tricks they do for D-Mo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvGftuPY-Bc, or this example how JV can get the ball deep in the paint at 0;57 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ9LyQ2SxO8. Not that NT didn't try or didn't have plays for bigs, actually Kazlauskas emphasized that quite strongly in 2013, specially plays for Kleiza, but it didn't work that well for some reasons. I just think Lith NT school doesn't really know yet how to play that kind of a basketball, we are famous with shooting, pick and roll, kickouts. Post game is something really new for us. We never had great post players, Sabonis wasn't exactly a post player either. Einikis is probably a best post player we had in 90's, that's pretty much it. In 00's Šaras once said (2008 if I'm not mistaken), Šiškauskas is our best post player...JV, D-MO, Sabonis open completely new page.

Yet again, JV was out of shape, he was missing bunnies, he was slow, rusty. What that has to do with the team, it's all on you. You blame your self if you miss layups, easy buckets.