2021 Euro Qualifiers

[madmax]

I really don't wanna sound like a negative Nancy here, but I honestly think we are done as an elite basketball nation in the world...and that is all despite the fact that we have the strongest frontline in our NT history, which is totally negated by the fact that our PG position is by far the weakest and pathetic I've ever seen - even belgian streetballers were made to look like NBA superstars against them I don't even wanna think what will happen if we go into a real war with heavily undersized and defensively challenged Lekavicius as our main PG lmao - we'll be eaten alive in this position in every single game. The likes of Kalnietis and other LKL level scrubs shouldn't even be invited into a camp anymore, but they will be there of course, since we simply have nothing to chose from...it's pathetic guys and it's truly over - we are doomed as a basketball nation and we are quickly approaching the lowest of the lows of our football disaster

[LuDux]

Getting my popcorns ready and waiting for SF's post.

Same popcorns as yesterday

[Hepcat]

Well so much for the thinking that Team Lietuva would have done better with a coach other than Dainius Adomaitis between 2017 and 2019. Out of 23 official games during those years, I count only one in which the team didn't look prepared to play, that being the playoff against Greece in 2017. And throughout the qualifiers to the World Championships, he consistently assembled a collection of players from whatever odds and sods were available and molded this collection into a team. Twould seem now that what Coach Adomaitis consistently accomplished isn't so easy.

I wonder what his many detractors will say now.

[Hepcat]

Sirvydis with his size, toughness and IQ is any day already more serious player, and so is other youngsters....

Cut the crap about IQ! All these assessments of yours are strictly subjective and bear only the most passing relationship to players' performance on the floor. Deividas Sirvydis has not yet demonstrated that he belongs anywhere near the Olympic qualifying camp:

LKL - 17:21 minutes over 22 games with an Eff rating of 4.4
Eurocup - 14:56 minutes over 15 games with an Eff rating of 5.3

Big deal.

And Arnoldas Kulboka:

BCL - 11:30 minutes over 12 games with an Eff rating of 2.8

Uggghhh!

I don't care how these players "look"; what I want to see is results! That's my bottom line definition of IQ.

I don't know what went wrong today other than the obvious. They couldn't shoot (they couldn't even make their foul shots!), they didn't rebound worth a damn, they didn't do anything to make it difficult for the Belgians to score, all they did effectively was turn the ball over. They simply weren't a team that was prepared to play today.

Somehow Coach Adomaitis always managed to mold his odds and sods into a team in the few days he had available, and Coach Darius Maskoliūnas failed miserably to do the same in his first test today.

[Hepcat]

Hard to say something about Maskoliunas other than that team was unprepared mentally and he overused Bendzius way too much. Reality chuck and rough debut.

Well at least we agree there. The team simply wasn't ready to play. I think they probably believed all the press clippings about how all they had to do was show up to roll over a "weak" Belgian team. I see even former coach Antanas Sireika was quoted on Thursday as saying Belgium was not a "serious" team and he's certainly someone who should know better.

And Eimantas Bendžius was dreadful and simply should not have been out on the floor for so long.

[Hepcat]

Im not liking Maskoliunas plan trying to put difficult zalgiris system in such short of time,sometimes when no time to prep let the players play ! It was obviuos our players was overthinking for 3 querters because got too manny new info in couple days.

I agree. Complex systems are not for national teams. The time that's required to instill such systems just isn't there. It's all about Keep It Simple Stupid.

[Straight forward]

I really don't wanna sound like a negative Nancy here, but I honestly think we are done as an elite basketball nation in the world...and that is all despite the fact that we have the strongest frontline in our NT history, which is totally negated by the fact that our PG position is by far the weakest and pathetic I've ever seen - even belgian streetballers were made to look like NBA superstars against them I don't even wanna think what will happen if we go into a real war with heavily undersized and defensively challenged Lekavicius as our main PG lmao - we'll be eaten alive in this position in every single game. The likes of Kalnietis and other LKL level scrubs shouldn't even be invited into a camp anymore, but they will be there of course, since we simply have nothing to chose from...it's pathetic guys and it's truly over - we are doomed as a basketball nation and we are quickly approaching the lowest of the lows of our football disaster

Exaggeration. Bigs role decreased generally, whatever PG you would put together. Look how NBA all star Vucevic looks in FIBA, hell, even Jokic was a shadow of Bogdanovic. FIBA is guards and wings zone. And give some respect to Lekavicius, he was great in WC and he's one of better PGs in EL this season and maybe the most impactful role guard coming of the bench in entire EL. Value what we have. Plus, no Kalnietis is not a scrub, he'll be solid in summer again.

Same popcorns as yesterday

I wasn't that bad this time, was I?

Well so much for the thinking that Team Lietuva would have done better with a coach other than Dainius Adomaitis between 2017 and 2019. Out of 23 official games during those years, I count only one in which the team didn't look prepared to play, that being the playoff against Greece in 2017. And throughout the qualifiers to the World Championships, he consistently assembled a collection of players from whatever odds and sods were available and molded this collection into a team. Twould seem now that what Coach Adomaitis consistently accomplished isn't so easy.

I wonder what his many detractors will say now.

Hepcat, I respect your point and it's good time to give some credit to Adomaitis. But let's not overreact after one crappy game. We're still borderline elite NT which wants (at least I indicate that) to bounce back and be elite. Nothing less should be our goals. Saying how 2 losses in major tournaments 2017, 2019 is something to repeat is non-sense. Even if some of Dainius good work is overlooked and underappreciated, let's not cross the line and lower our bars to the extremes. Adomaitis knew what he's doing and why when he retired by his will. And I respect him because of that.

Cut the crap about IQ! All these assessments of yours are strictly subjective and bear only the most passing relationship to players' performance on the floor. Deividas Sirvydis has not yet demonstrated that he belongs anywhere near the Olympic qualifying camp:

LKL - 17:21 minutes over 22 games with an Eff rating of 4.4
Eurocup - 14:56 minutes over 15 games with an Eff rating of 5.3

Big deal.

And Arnoldas Kulboka:

BCL - 11:30 minutes over 12 games with an Eff rating of 2.8

Uggghhh!

I don't care how these players "look"; what I want to see is results! That's my bottom line definition of IQ.

I don't know what went wrong today other than the obvious. They couldn't shoot (they copuldn't even make their foul shots!), they didn't rebound worth a damn, they didn

Well, that's were we disagree and that's OK. To me, it's all about seeing a player playing, not his stats. The role is everything. If the guy is standing in the corners offensively, but rotates perfectly, passes the ball perfectly (which doesn't indicate nothing in stats line) and plays solid D, he may be a better player than a player who goes ISO and fills the stats for a worse team.

And Kulboka is playing in ACB this season, not BCL.

Well at least we agree there. The team simply wasn't ready to play. I think they probably believed all the press clippings about how all they had to do was show up to roll over a "weak" Belgian team. And Eimantas Bendžius was dreadful and simply should not have been out on the floor for so long.

True. And, yeah, I agree that NT shouldn't over complicated the style of ball. Simply no time for such strategy to pan out. We should look for the best line-ups which provides best spacing, best O and D coherence, to find shooting spots, play p'n'r, run to transition more for easy buckets (Kuz, Giedraitis, Lekavicius and even Grigonis are perfect for that) and to forget about idea that 2 big centers will be effective in contemporary FIBA ball.

[Toruko]

The most important things in bb are:

- balanced skill set in the rosters
- clear roles for every player
- being used to play together
- a true floor general on the floor

LTU has really precious bigs but they lose at least 50% of their effectiveness without a point guard who is able to activate every player on the floor. Lekavicius brings energy and is a great rim runner but he doesnt know how to activate the rest of the team. I was never a friend of Kalnietis. He is a walking TO machine for me and he has passed his prime long ago. Unfortunately coaches trust these old ones too much.

BB is a guards game right now. Classic big men like Valenciunas are not that welcome right now. 10 years ago he would be one of the top 3 big man in Europe. With these play maker though i dont see LTU overcome the quarter finals of any tournament.

[Straight forward]

The most important things in bb are:

- balanced skill set in the rosters
- clear roles for every player
- being used to play together
- a true floor general on the floor

LTU has really precious bigs but they lose at least 50% of their effectiveness without a point guard who is able to activate every player on the floor. Lekavicius brings energy and is a great rim runner but he doesnt know how to activate the rest of the team. I was never a friend of Kalnietis. He is a walking TO machine for me and he has passed his prime long ago. Unfortunately coaches trust these old ones too much.

BB is a guards game right now. Classic big men like Valenciunas are not that welcome right now. 10 years ago he would be one of the top 3 big man in Europe. With these play maker though i dont see LTU overcome the quarter finals of any tournament.

PG is always important, but the model of- traditional bruiser + all around PG is simply dead. Lithuania in 2019 WC fell apart at the end of the game not because our bigs didn't receive the ball enough, but because we lacked contemporary BB fundamentals, that is spreading the floor, shooting and more of position-less D. We need elite PG, but for all around facilitating and not feeding our bigs all the time. That's dead end. Among top 25 best scorers of WC19 there's zero traditional centers. Tight, rigid fiba ball which is wrestling compared to NBA regular season is non convenient for traditional bruisers and post game, not to mention their inability to switch at D.

And you just too harsh on Kalnietis. He has been elite FIBA PG in 2013-2017 stretch and even in 2019 he was solid with +5 assists (10ppg) in 23min. Off course, he's past his prime, but still very valuable piece.

4finals? Yeah, for our current talent level at 2020 that will be extremely tough, but possible as 2019 WC campaign showed. We were really close taking down both Aussies and France. But let's first make OG. Slovenia will go hard on us and on a good shooting day things may happen.

[Hepcat]

You know in the final analysis only one team took yesterday's game seriously and that was Belgium. In fact I'm very willing to bet that the Belgians derived extra motivation from all those articles in the press hinting that they weren't a serious opponent for the Lithuanian team. Somebody was undoubtedly posting those articles (many/most translated from Lithuanian) on the bulletin board of the Belgian team's locker room. The Belgians therefore came out yesterday determined to make a statement.

Meanwhile the Lithuanian team probably believed its own press clippings. They treated the trip to Belgium as a nice mid-winter holiday break from the rigours of their respective club team schedules.

Somehow though in the WC qualifiers from 2017-19 former Coach Adomaitis had the formula to get whatever players he had assembled to treat each opponent seriously. And I really enjoyed seeing players who were realistically only on the periphery of making a real Team Lietuva coalesce into a cohesive unit after a week's time ready to play whatever opponent was on the schedule. Hopefully Coach Maskoliūnas can now discover the same formula. A quick fix is in fact necessary.

[madmax]

like Toruko already mentioned, Lekavicius is not even a true facilitator, but rather an energy guy and dribble penetrator, best suited coming off the bench to give a scoring boost to the second unit...he's really not suited and built to lead and control one of the supposed "elite" NTs in the world against the best opposition - we shouldn't ask him of that and he is not cut for it, both physically and talent wise. Solution? A walking turnover waiting to happen Kalnietis? I think not, thank you very much. We should thank him for all of his past endeavours with our NT and say goodbye in his future activities (the ones not related to basketball that is). What other stud is there waiting to fill in big PG shoes? I somehow fail to see anyone, unless you treat Grigonis as a PG, which is once again suicidal against the best the world has to offer. In other words, to sum it all up, we are truly and well screwed ladies and gents...

[Toruko]

like Toruko already mentioned, Lekavicius is not even a true facilitator, but rather an energy guy and dribble penetrator, best suited coming off the bench to give a scoring boost to the second unit...he's really not suited and built to lead and control one of the supposed "elite" NTs in the world against the best opposition - we shouldn't ask him of that and he is not cut for it, both physically and talent wise. Solution? A walking turnover waiting to happen Kalnietis? I think not, thank you very much. We should thank him for all of his past endeavours with our NT and say goodbye in his future activities (the ones not related to basketball that is). What other stud is there waiting to fill in big PG shoes? I somehow fail to see anyone, unless you treat Grigonis as a PG, which is once again suicidal against the best the world has to offer. In other words, to sum it all up, we are truly and well screwed ladies and gents...

1A comment! This! I love this comment. Thank you!

[Hepcat]

And Kulboka is playing in ACB this season, not BCL.

I'm sorry. I didn't notice that Basketnews.lt doesn't carry the 2019-20 stats for players under contract outside Lithuania.

Nonetheless, let's see what stats I can quickly find for some of the younger relative newcomers to Team Lietuva:

Tomas Dimša

LKL -26:32 minutes over 22 games with an Eff rating of 13.9
BCL - 26:17 over 14 games with an Eff rating of 7.6

Paulius Valinskas

LKL - 25:07 over 16 games with an Eff rating of 4.8
BCL - 26:27 over 11 games with an Eff rating of 9.5

Gytis Masiulis

LKL - 22:40 over 18 games with an Eff rating of 13.0
BCL - 22:23 over 13 games with an Eff rating of 9.5

Laurynas Birutis

LKL - 24:54 over 11 games with an Eff rating of 20.6

Martynas Sajus

LKL - 20:30 over 22 games with an Eff rating of 12.9
BCL - 22:25 over 14 games with an Eff rating of 7.2

In comparison here are some stats for some of the youngsters who didn't receive invitations:

Arnas Velička

LKL - 26:05 over 22 games with an Eff rating of 13.4

Rokas Jokubaitis

LKL - 15:24 over 17 games with an Eff rating of 8.4

Lukas Uleckas

LKL - 27:11 over 21 games with an Eff rating of 9.1

Deividas Sirvydis

LKL - 17:21 minutes over 22 games with an Eff rating of 4.4
Eurocup - 14:56 minutes over 15 games with an Eff rating of 5.3

Matas Jogėla

LKL - 17:34 over 21 games with an Eff rating of 9.5
BCL - 14:23 over 13 games with an Eff rating of 3.2

Tadas Sedekerskis

LKL - 23:51 over 21 games with an Eff rating of 14.3
BCL - 19:34 over 14 games with an Eff rating of 6.1

Laurynas Beliauskas

LKL - 27:44 minutes over 15 games with an Eff rating of 15.3

Arnoldas Kulboka

ACB - 21.4 minutes over 21 games with 8.6 points per game

So Arnas Velička, Rokas Jokubaitis, Tadas Sedekerskis, Laurynas Beliauskas and Arnoldas Kulboka could indeed be ready to contribute to the qualifiers this fall and I'd like to see what they can do.

[Toruko]

Maybe you can answer me my question. Velicka was in U18 a really solid shooter and turned to a total non shooter. Do you have an explanation for that? The same goes for the french guard Juhann Begarin. Its very seldom that a player loses his shooting ability.

[Hepcat]

No, sorry. I don't know either.