As a devoted NT fan I had to go back and watch Greece- Lithuania for one more time to realize what really happened, and here's my reflections:
- From the very start we suffered because of crappy transition defence, D-Mo let Printezis to score at least 4 easy points in fast brakes (not only him sucked at this point, whole tournament problem). I have few reasons to explain why that kept happening in EB: we had 2 kinda slow bigs in the starting line-up and our turtle half court offence was so sticky and synthetic that we couldn't quickly and optimally gather for the defensive effort, Adomaitis simply couldn't establish well oiled team defence, something Kazlauskas was surely able to do.
- Kalnietis was weak link from the very first minutes of the game, specially defensively, he was an open hole, hate to say this. Calathes was going through him all game long. Like it wouldn't be enough he shot the ball 4/12 from the field and 4 To's is not the all story. He made a least 3-4 bad passes when JV or other player touched the ball, but couldn't control it. To sup up, Kalnietis couldn't guard anyone, I think he was second worse defender after Gecevicius in the team and overall failed to deliver as a main PG.
- JV's defence. After p'n'r he steps back to deep and allows Calathes to finish with a comfortable floater. Later he's too far away from Papagiannis who finishes with an open baby hook. JV usually is too distant from the guard, that comes from NBA off course (plenty off athletic guards who can punish him at the rim) and overall he doesn't have defensive flexibility to be a good p'n'r defender (not news though).
- Kalnietis kept running p'n'r with JV almost every single possession. but very often Kalnietis just dumped the ball to a player standing in a bad position for a bad shot (that's a complain for the coach, you can't play such predictable O again and again).
- Maciulis (offensively), Gudaitis and Specially Gecevicius choked (he did so many harm in 3 minutes that it's beyond any criticism).
- Anytime Kuzminskas went to the basket aggressively good things happened, we had to play through him even more.
-And as mentioned before, no guard except Girgonis could play D...
To sum up, we barely can play Kalnietis and JV together. We build the team around them primarily and this decision was destructive, specially in the knock out stage where we usually were able to find more balance, to play more flexible, vital BB, but it didn't happen this time. We had to utilize our forwards as Kuzminskas and Ulanovas so much more, we had to look for transition options. Just as last summer Autralia's backourt went straight through our backourt, pretty much the same happened this year. In offence sometimes it works nicely, but both Kalnietis and JV are bad defenders. Kalnietis is washed out defensively generally and JV is just not good p'n'r defender. NT should radically reform the attitude at the current talent pool, Kalnietis is not starting calibre player of NT any more. After this tournament I have little doubt Lekavicius is a better player already, he would be because of his lock down perimeter defence alone, but I think he's already better offensively as well. At offence Kalnietis still is a decent player, but the way he played defensively is not excusable. His role should surely be reduced. We have to increase tempo, to build around agile and aggressive players as Kuzminskas, Sabonis, Lekavicius, Ulanovas, to link JV only with a good defensive PGs (we have one at he moment...). Kalnietis could come of the bench and to do what he does best - looking for his own shot in transition. If he would play 10-14 minutes he would have enough of stamina for that kind of BB, something what he currently does for Milano team. His facilitating ability is overrated, he usually ball hogs (his dribbling is really bad) and his assists and to's balance wasn't good in this tournament. Also Kalnietis should be linked with a good defensive bigs, let's say Jankunas and Sabonis, this way they can cover him defensively a little bit. Other than that I think this tournament was the beginning of the end of Kalnietis' era (2000-2016). His last 2 years poor club performances are no fluke...He had a miraculous offensive performance in OG, but that doesn't happen every summer and even than it wasn't the best thing for the team (he was looking for his own shot primarily). We should be heading forward, but I'm afraid Adomaitis doesn't have guts to do so, hopefully I'm wrong.
- From the very start we suffered because of crappy transition defence, D-Mo let Printezis to score at least 4 easy points in fast brakes (not only him sucked at this point, whole tournament problem). I have few reasons to explain why that kept happening in EB: we had 2 kinda slow bigs in the starting line-up and our turtle half court offence was so sticky and synthetic that we couldn't quickly and optimally gather for the defensive effort, Adomaitis simply couldn't establish well oiled team defence, something Kazlauskas was surely able to do.
- Kalnietis was weak link from the very first minutes of the game, specially defensively, he was an open hole, hate to say this. Calathes was going through him all game long. Like it wouldn't be enough he shot the ball 4/12 from the field and 4 To's is not the all story. He made a least 3-4 bad passes when JV or other player touched the ball, but couldn't control it. To sup up, Kalnietis couldn't guard anyone, I think he was second worse defender after Gecevicius in the team and overall failed to deliver as a main PG.
- JV's defence. After p'n'r he steps back to deep and allows Calathes to finish with a comfortable floater. Later he's too far away from Papagiannis who finishes with an open baby hook. JV usually is too distant from the guard, that comes from NBA off course (plenty off athletic guards who can punish him at the rim) and overall he doesn't have defensive flexibility to be a good p'n'r defender (not news though).
- Kalnietis kept running p'n'r with JV almost every single possession. but very often Kalnietis just dumped the ball to a player standing in a bad position for a bad shot (that's a complain for the coach, you can't play such predictable O again and again).
- Maciulis (offensively), Gudaitis and Specially Gecevicius choked (he did so many harm in 3 minutes that it's beyond any criticism).
- Anytime Kuzminskas went to the basket aggressively good things happened, we had to play through him even more.
-And as mentioned before, no guard except Girgonis could play D...
To sum up, we barely can play Kalnietis and JV together. We build the team around them primarily and this decision was destructive, specially in the knock out stage where we usually were able to find more balance, to play more flexible, vital BB, but it didn't happen this time. We had to utilize our forwards as Kuzminskas and Ulanovas so much more, we had to look for transition options. Just as last summer Autralia's backourt went straight through our backourt, pretty much the same happened this year. In offence sometimes it works nicely, but both Kalnietis and JV are bad defenders. Kalnietis is washed out defensively generally and JV is just not good p'n'r defender. NT should radically reform the attitude at the current talent pool, Kalnietis is not starting calibre player of NT any more. After this tournament I have little doubt Lekavicius is a better player already, he would be because of his lock down perimeter defence alone, but I think he's already better offensively as well. At offence Kalnietis still is a decent player, but the way he played defensively is not excusable. His role should surely be reduced. We have to increase tempo, to build around agile and aggressive players as Kuzminskas, Sabonis, Lekavicius, Ulanovas, to link JV only with a good defensive PGs (we have one at he moment...). Kalnietis could come of the bench and to do what he does best - looking for his own shot in transition. If he would play 10-14 minutes he would have enough of stamina for that kind of BB, something what he currently does for Milano team. His facilitating ability is overrated, he usually ball hogs (his dribbling is really bad) and his assists and to's balance wasn't good in this tournament. Also Kalnietis should be linked with a good defensive bigs, let's say Jankunas and Sabonis, this way they can cover him defensively a little bit. Other than that I think this tournament was the beginning of the end of Kalnietis' era (2000-2016). His last 2 years poor club performances are no fluke...He had a miraculous offensive performance in OG, but that doesn't happen every summer and even than it wasn't the best thing for the team (he was looking for his own shot primarily). We should be heading forward, but I'm afraid Adomaitis doesn't have guts to do so, hopefully I'm wrong.
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