Top Lithuanian Coaches

[Mindozas]

Agreed basically, I simply don't have a picture if Kairys. But I like what I see in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbvIOo3U5pY The only obvious issue I have even not knowing him well, he seems to be a calm, polite, introverted guy. Wouldn't he be lacking bigger guts? He is certainly gives an effort which shows dedication and ambition, but he's still obviously more of a tender, delicate temper man which might be a problem here and there - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqG7o3TY0G4

Adomaitis has a right personality and mental toughness to handle pressure, but so far he has been very conservative and limited tactics wise. He want to fundamental and very simple basketball, but it's not the right direction. Today's BB is all about high IQ tactics, little details, and Jasikevicius' success proves that, he's all about that.

Adomaitis was indeed like that when he coached Neptunas, Juventus. But this season, with more options in his hands, I see him being more versatile, not by a miles, but he is improving. Funny, but I see him learning from Saras quite a lot, he even speaks at times exactly the way Saras does during press conferences, using the same phrases Still, I'm not sold that Adomaitis will be big coach

That's the strongest part of your post, IMO. Time will tell. I'm not sold on his personality though. He has a shadow of "Vingiu Jonas" to me, specially when he was really chubby. Even now he's a guy with full cheeks, who resembles more of some milk's company manager than a guy who can go deep into coach career. To me, high quality coaches should have some class as personalities, some elegancy.

For me he always looked like a daddy's son, who received everything thnx to father's connections. But I must admit that he is improving bit by bit. He doesn't look to me like going further than LKL level tho, I don't see much of a tactician in him, but he is still very young to judge, so I'll leave some room for improvement. It'd be interesting to see him in Neptunas next season. Even tho there are rumours that club will have smaller budget next season and won't be that competitive

[LuDux]

Even tho there are rumours that club will have smaller budget next season and won't be that competitive

Weird rumour, especially in Petrauskai join in. Message in autumn was that this season will be for saving before improving again next season

[Mindozas]

Weird rumour, especially in Petrauskai join in. Message in autumn was that this season will be for saving before improving again next season

Maksvytis attracts money and sponsors too, he has great relations with some businessmen in Klaipeda, when he will leave, some plans to cut the sponsorship either. Neptunas didn't expect Maksvytis to leave, offer from Parma came out of nowhere. Petrauskai might cover something tho if they'll come, but I don't know how much, we'll see

[Dreamcatcher]

I want to add one name as i have a feeling he is/can be a good coach - Mantas Sernius who is a head coach of women NT. He played football (!) but got injured and became a coach in women basketball at 25. After 5 years he began to coach Pieno Zvaigzdes that looked solid as well as all other teams he coached i think (except the last performance of Zalgiris's youth team in the final EL round and i don't follow women basketball). He coached U16 2000 y.o. team one summer and the game looked very nice and the guys were just unlucky to grab the gold. When Petrauskas came it didn't look so well. This season Sernius came to Zalgiris's second team during the season and the things went clearly better. He's an intelligent coach, maybe too intelligent for a big club.

[Recp]

Kalev announced that Kairys will not continue at the club next year. Going to be interesting to see where he heads next.

[Dreamcatcher]

I want to add one name as i have a feeling he is/can be a good coach - Mantas Sernius who is a head coach of women NT. He played football (!) but got injured and became a coach in women basketball at 25. After 5 years he began to coach Pieno Zvaigzdes that looked solid as well as all other teams he coached i think (except the last performance of Zalgiris's youth team in the final EL round and i don't follow women basketball). He coached U16 2000 y.o. team one summer and the game looked very nice and the guys were just unlucky to grab the gold. When Petrauskas came it didn't look so well. This season Sernius came to Zalgiris's second team during the season and the things went clearly better. He's an intelligent coach, maybe too intelligent for a big club.

So he became a head coach of a new Prienai team. But it seems it going to be a kind of a Zalgiris LKL farm club.

[Dreamcatcher]

Kurtinaitis is the worst El coach. He should have been fired already, now it may be too late for Khimki.

Edit: he may have enough credits because of winning against CSKA (VTB) and Real.

[Straight forward]

Kairys hired as a head coach of Saratov „Avtodor“. I really hope something will turn out from Kairys. We need new generation coaches because our coaching has been weak for ages now. One borderline-elite coach in three decades of NT. Others, basically all mediocre. That's not how it should. Never seen a game of Kairys, but he has tons of interesting experience like working at CSKA, also with Spurs in their championship year, he worked with Messina, Kemzura, seen how Popovic works. Seems to be BB geek and loves up tempo basketball. Personally, I think there will have to be shift in terms of NT playing style. We will have much more offence compared to 10's most likely and we'll have to finally adjust more to position-less basketball which is the future. Lithuania with our great bigs will always have the choice to play inside, but we have to add speed, creativity, skill and shooting. Second half of 10's showed that we ain't winning anything with slow, limited inside game, pounding the ball inside. Looking forward to coaches who would be contemporary enough, not boiling in the local waters with the same mediocre mentality witch leads to banal decisions and outdated thinking. Basically I see 2 coaches that I'm high on because of their international experience alone, one is proved, other yet do so hopefully:

1. Jasikevicius
2. Kairys

and maybe Maskoliunas, but I'm sceptical about it because I believe he has too many connection with an old school coaching tradition in Kazlauskas while BB really shifted in last 4 years. His only advantage is watching how Saras works, the guy who has very limited teams usually and also slowing down things more than he would having more offensive power and creativity.

Others are too provincial in terms of experience to me.

We really lack young coaches who would give a little f...about local coaching tradition which is at pathetic level compared to our players talent levels, IMO, and would look for international experience in the first place, be it NBA, Spain or some EL teams. That should be priority for all young coaches, forget Lithuanian school other than Kazlauskas and specially Jasikevicius, we never had good coaching school. Garastas was sitting his ass down watching Sabonis, Kurtinaitis, Marciulionis improvise. Pretty similarly Kurtinaitis is coaching. That's ill mannered coaching.

[Mindozas]

Garastas was sitting his ass down watching Sabonis, Kurtinaitis, Marciulionis improvise. Pretty similarly Kurtinaitis is coaching. That's ill mannered coaching.

C'mon, don't make Garastas look as some scrub he was really good coach, I think I already wrote about him in this thread couple of years ago, how players loved him and appreciated him, he was great psychologist most of all, but also good tactician. Just people fails to give him some credit cause it happened that he coached such talented generation. But he started with Zalgiris when there was no Sabas, when nobody wanted to coach a club, cause it was about to relegate from top soviet league, Garastas took the challenge and very next season we were 2nd. In 1992 he didn't need any mastermind plans when he had Sabas and Marcela running the game, two individually skilled beasts. Then Karnisovas and Kurtinaitis beside them. Last thing you would do is to put them into some frames, but you had to know how to control such team, big egos, back then players ended up fighting even on practices, simply that generation was obsessed with winning and what to say about off-court activities Garastas was perfect for such role, he knew exactly how to work, when to push, when to let go, no wonder players went against public before Olympics to get back Garastas to NT as a coach, when nation was against him for coaching Soviet NT in 1990, while all the players refused to play there

[Straight forward]

C'mon, don't make Garastas look as some scrub he was really good coach, I think I already wrote about him in this thread couple of years ago, how players loved him and appreciated him, he was great psychologist most of all, but also good tactician. Just people fails to give him some credit cause it happened that he coached such talented generation. But he started with Zalgiris when there was no Sabas, when nobody wanted to coach a club, cause it was about to relegate from top soviet league, Garastas took the challenge and very next season we were 2nd. In 1992 he didn't need any mastermind plans when he had Sabas and Marcela running the game, two individually skilled beasts. Then Karnisovas and Kurtinaitis beside them. Last thing you would do is to put them into some frames, but you had to know how to control such team, big egos, back then players ended up fighting even on practices, simply that generation was obsessed with winning and what to say about off-court activities Garastas was perfect for such role, he knew exactly how to work, when to push, when to let go, no wonder players went against public before Olympics to get back Garastas to NT as a coach, when nation was against him for coaching Soviet NT in 1990, while all the players refused to play there

Fair enough. I watched 1995 EC final a year ago and the D was so ridiculously loose. That walking zone all the time. Off course, Sabonis couldn't and didn't want to step up, but that was more like pseudo D than real. I'm not familiar with pre-NT Garastas, but one can learn little from Garastas from current perspective, IMO. He may have been great in 80s, but in the NT there were little tactics and with better organised D we could really take gold in 1995. Sasha was shooting one open jimmy after another and there was zero adjustments.

[Mindozas]

Fair enough. I watched 1995 EC final a year ago and the D was so ridiculously loose. That walking zone all the time. Off course, Sabonis couldn't and didn't want to step up, but that was more like pseudo D than real. I'm not familiar with pre-NT Garastas, but one can learn little from Garastas from current perspective, IMO. He may have been great in 80s, but in the NT there were little tactics and with better organised D we could really take gold in 1995. Sasha was shooting one open jimmy after another and there was zero adjustments.

The problem was that we had no tools for adjustments. Of course some coaching mistakes could've happened, I watched the game long time ago to remember all the details, but IMO most vital thing was fatigue. Don't forget that this was 3rd game in 3 days for our limited and a bit aged roster, all main guys played almost 40mins each in knock-out stage and bench was very short back then. Another issue was that our key defender of that generation - Chomicius was already aged and pretty much done. He was beast at defence and could cover lot of holes till 1992 more or less, but 1995 he was not able to bring that anymore. Anyway, if we coped well defensively with Yugos in group stage, then in final it looked like there are not much gas left in our tank for both offense and defense. As you wrote - Sabas was slow, Kurtinaitis was slow as hell and fouled out if I recall correctly, Marciulionis gave it all in offense, Lukminas never was a good defender, youngsters were too raw to help. Yugoslavia simply was younger, fresher, with a bit longer bench with more experienced players there. If we could match them in 1st half, then in 2nd it was harder and harder to do that and they finally broke us. Actually they were simply a bit better than us back then. It hurt to lose a lot, but now it looks like a bit better team won

[Straight forward]

Damn, this scandal around Sireika is really something. I didn't read all the article, but obviously tons of ex players are saying that Sireika was super disrespectful, inadequate, cruel and so on. Super long exhausting trainings, direct humiliations of players while studying video, mysterious tactics and ect. I always wanted to be a player as teenager, but when you think about it's a tough business when you land on someone like Sireika and not Schiller Dude, so Garastas knew what he's talking about when he was really critical towards him. Here's Urbonusas takling about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7YfTCcvKk

[Mindozas]

I never was a fan of Sireika, to say the least, but why does it all reminds me of some sort of basketball'ish #metoo movement, when current soft generation can't handle some oldschool stuff. The same shit was happening with Saras and his supposed to be "monstrous" and "tyrannical" methods of work... Before that Kazlauskas was the target for media. Maybe I'm wrong and Antanas really lost his coolness a bit in latest years, don't know that. He used to get cocky and made bunch of wrongs decision cause of that, like stripping Nelson off his duties in 2004 for no reason after winning Eurobasket. Anyway, I didn't read all the article, not going to pay a cent for that, but if the worst thing he did was giving players some names, then it's just laughable. "I lost love for the game cause of such coach".. jeez. Such players are done, weak, unless they are hoping to play all career under the same coach, who can't say a harsh word on them. Good luck with that. That's the same wrong thing like coaches who are screaming for no reason (Seskus e.g.)

[Straight forward]

I never was a fan of Sireika, to say the least, but why does it all reminds me of some sort of basketball'ish #metoo movement, when current soft generation can't handle some oldschool stuff. The same shit was happening with Saras and his supposed to be "monstrous" and "tyrannical" methods of work... Before that Kazlauskas was the target for media. Maybe I'm wrong and Antanas really lost his coolness a bit in latest years, don't know that. He used to get cocky and made bunch of wrongs decision cause of that, like stripping Nelson off his duties in 2004 for no reason after winning Eurobasket. Anyway, I didn't read all the article, not going to pay a cent for that, but if the worst thing he did was giving players some names, then it's just laughable. "I lost love for the game cause of such coach".. jeez. Such players are done, weak, unless they are hoping to play all career under the same coach, who can't say a harsh word on them. Good luck with that. That's the same wrong thing like coaches who are screaming for no reason (Seskus e.g.)

Well, I see your point. I agree to degree, in sports you can't expect to meat Gandhi type of personalities as coaches (you super lucky if you jump on someone like Schiller or Joan Plaza), but to me all this "old school" coaching, IMO, is destined to fade away. It's the trait of closed society where the hierarchy can't be moved and individuals have little options. I think A. Javtokas is right saying that now young players are about opportunities and motivation and not constraint. You can't get what you want with the "crack of whip", but only with motivation and attention. Most of the best new coaches are all classy, reserved and "players' coaches" who brake the distances between player and coaches, looking for connection, trust and mutual respect. Like Brad Stevens, Nick Nurse or Schiller. IMO, there can't be the team where there's no respect. Saras can yell the shit out of you, but you still feel he's giving you a tough love, nothing else. But even he to some degree I think stuck with some old school methods and he still can improve with that. Be strict, but not violent. Be strict, but emphatic, not authoritarian. IMO, with time teams will simply cut lose with players who needs authoritarians to get their ass moving. NBA is a player's league for a long time now and the ball game is all great, simply teams invest tons to scouting, exploring player's mentality and even mentoring them in the open society fashion. You can't motive player by saying "I'll fuck you up if you won't do it what I ask you", it worked in the past, but the direction is towards open society and you won't handle current youngsters with that shit IMO, even Saras will have to cut with his style soon. Europe will catch up with NBA rather sooner than later. We saw how much Obradovic achieved recently with his F word using all over the board. The guy is done.

[LuDux]

I never was a fan of Sireika, to say the least, but why does it all reminds me of some sort of basketball'ish #metoo movement, when current soft generation can't handle some oldschool stuff.

OK, boomer. Thanks for winning WWII by the way