From EuroLeague Final Four to missing the local league's final: What happened to Zalgiris? / News - Basketnews.com

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Four years ago, Zalgiris Kaunas played in the EuroLeague Final Four and captured third place.

Free throws this season

80%11,5Points made:11,5Accuracy:80,0%Place in standings:11Record max:35Record min:4Most made FTs:Lukas LekavičiusTeamEuroLeagueStatisticsSchedule

Three years ago, Zalgiris played in the EuroLeague playoffs.

Two years ago, they would have probably played in the playoffs again if not for the EuroLeague's decision to forfeit the season due to COVID-19.

Last year, Zalgiris had an equal balance of wins and losses in the EuroLeague.

This year, they placed last in the EuroLeague and didn't even manage to make it to the Lithuanian League final, a first in the league's history since its establishment in 1993.

How did the team that looked so successful just this past year manage to become so inept? After barely making past the quarterfinal barrier with a 3-2 series win, the team from Kaunas fell 1-3 in the semifinal. How?

Locally, Zalgiris have such an overwhelming financial advantage against the other teams in Lithuania that such losses should not be imaginable. The team's budget is larger than all other teams combined. If the financial argument is often made in the EuroLeague, why shouldn't it be brought up in the domestic competition?

The way Zalgiris looked in the Lithuanian league's playoffs and the results they managed to get - it's not normal. However, it is a logical sequence of the past two years.

Life with Sarunas Jasikevicius was complicated but simple at the same time. Saras, the basketball maniac who watches 8 hours of basketball footage daily, knew the players he wanted for the next year during the middle of the season. Only the financial part would be left to take care of.

Of course, Saras played cat and mouse game each summer with Zalgiris GM Paulius Motiejunas, not knowing whether the coach would stay with the team or not.

The times were not easy during the season, and unpleasant episodes of bad mood kept all organization members on their toes.

The victories - both simple and glorious - were there, though, as the club would hit the jackpot with players' selection more often than not. The emotions were overwhelmingly positive both in the community and in the team. Life was easy.

Life became not that easy when Saras decided to leave for FC Barcelona in the early summer of 2020.

After Zalgiris GM Motiejunas announced the beginning of a search for a new head coach, his plans had to change in just a couple of days. The primary candidate Darius Maskoliunas refused to take the opportunity and left for Barca together with Saras.

Kazys Maksvytis still had his contract with Parma Basket, with both sides exchanging pleasantries but not going any further, and coach Kestutis Kemzura did not even understand the purpose of his meeting with Motiejunas.

Zalgiris had to go to Plan C. Plan C was to hire a foreign coach. After holding several talks, the organization became impressed with a man that had never worked as a head coach in Europe before - Martin Schiller.

He was voted the NBA G-League Coach of the Year, he said all the right things, and the strangest thing is, no one even questioned the idea of a coach that not only hadn't been a head coach in the EuroLeague, he hadn't been a head coach in Europe.

The Zalgiris organization essentially decided that the players are supposed to be the stars of the team, not the coach, as Joffrey Lauvergne became the most expensive blockbuster addition to the team in the offseason.

It illustrated a change in the thinking of how the team should be assembled. With Jasikevicius leading the club, it searched for hungry players on the rise who are not on the EuroLeague level yet but are willing to go through pains to make it in the European basketball scene.

When Saras left, a famous and experienced player was signed to ease the life of the new head coach.

However, it was not the main reason that made Martin Schiller's warmup in European basketball easier. It was the backcourt that remained with the team - Thomas Walkup, Marius Grigonis, Lukas Lekavicius, and Rokas Jokubaitis, who all stayed after Jasikevicius left. Their high-level play disguised the new coach's lack of experience and adaptability to European basketball.

Their performance was so good in the first half of the season that the organization allowed Schiller to hire one more inexperienced German to his coaching staff while also letting scout Evaldas Berzininkaitis go, who was the person that questioned Schiller's decisions the most.

If that was not enough, Schiller was tasked to assemble a new team for the upcoming season.

We should stop here. Paulius Motiejunas later admitted that the biggest mistake he made was trusting Martin Schiller. This way, he partially admits his mistake but puts all the blame on the coach.

Motiejunas allowed Schiller to invite Tyler Cavanaugh and Niels Giffey, while he wanted Mantas Kalnietis and Edgaras Ulanovas on the team himself. Josh Nebo arrived in Kaunas only due to Schiller's negotiation skills.

The most damming mistakes were made in constructing the most important ingredient in basketball - the backcourt.

Marius Grigonis received a lifetime contract during the offseason; both Walkup and Jokubaitis denied Zalgiris generous offers and decided to continue their careers in Piraeus and Barcelona, respectively. Zalgiris were left without their core.

Schiller and Motiejunas waited until the very end of the summer to hire Emmanuel Mudiay, who had never played in Europe before, as their main point guard. Janis Strelnieks was seen as his complimentary guy in the starting five.

It might have seemed logical. Strelnieks is worse on the defensive end but has much more experience and plays the pick and roll well while having the ability to shoot. Mudiay was seen as a physically strong guard, which allowed him to defend better and drive to the basket with ease, which would compensate for his lackluster shooting percentages and struggles in creativity.

It looked good on paper. The stuff written on paper is judged by the fans and journalists. Whether it will work on the court should be seen by coaches and clubs' management.

We can now point fingers at Strelnieks' inability to play in the Lithuanian league's semifinal or even quarterfinal. He became the most expensive trash minutes player in Zalgiris history.

The eyes of every opponent would light up whenever they saw Strelnieks guarding them. It is not a Janis Strelnieks problem. It is a problem for the people who saw him in Zalgiris.

When Schiller was fired after the autumn leaves hadn't fallen off, and Mudiay left the team almost immediately thereafter, it looked like the team's management knew what they were doing, that they had enough inside information to make such a decision.

When Kazys Maksvytis was called to take the head coach's spot at the end of the season, it looked like Motiejunas knew more than everybody else around once again.

"Let's hope everything will be better. We believe we can reach our goals," Motiejunas said after releasing Schiller and hiring Jure Zdovc to his position.

"We have our ambitions, and it was starting to look that they are getting harder and harder to reach with the former head coach," Motiejunas told after parting ways with Zdovc and hiring Maksvytis.

The last place in the EuroLeague, a Lithuanian Cup trophy, and a failure to get to the league's final. Something tells me that Martin Schiller could have achieved these things if we can say so.

Motiejunas should not be grilled for everything that is wrong with the club, but it is apparent that he has serious issues with selecting personnel, not only the players.

Since 2013 when Motiejunas came back to Zalgiris, a solid sports management right-hand guy was never hired.

Ginas Rutkauskas was there, but he parted ways with the club after only one season. They hired former player Robertas Javtokas, but ultimately he never proved his worth. There was Francois Lamy, who left the club before the season even ended. Algimantas Bruzas could have been here, but he decided to pursue a journalist's career instead of returning to Zalgiris.

The fact that the Zalgiris organization hasn't managed to grow any kind of managerial talent itself and parted ways with every person who tried to work with sports management in the club indicated a problem.

The Zalgiris office produced people who outgrew the club and continued their paths elsewhere in marketing, ticket sales, and business management but a sports director never matured.

It might have happened due to the fact that the position was held by people whose positions sounded differently on paper. Head coach Jasikevicius was the de factosports manager throughout his tenure with the club. Before and after Saras years, the de facto sports director was the owner and president of the club Motiejunas himself.

The 2021-22 season showed that de facto positions are not a combination for success. It's not 2014 anymore when you could win the Lithuanian championship with three coaches throughout the year.

If it still wasn't obvious, the loss to Lietkabelis Panevezys in the semifinal series made it the worst season for Zalgiris since the Lithuanian Independence.

When you fall from playing in the EuroLeague's Final Four to not even making the Lithuanian league's final, conclusions have to be made.

Zalgiris cannot afford to fail so irresponsibly again.

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