Because you need a challange. Against weaker teams in LKL you always know that unless something truly extraordinary happens they will win. Kurtinaitis likes to make it more challanging like the point difference or for example in one game against Marijampole Suduva Rytas were allowed to let Marijampole score 45 in a game and with 4:36 minutes to go in the last quarter Marijampole had a three and the result was 44, and boy you should have seen how every Rytas player were dying on court to not allow that single point. And the succeeded Marijampole couldnt score a single point during those 4 minutes straight and Kurtinaitis had to take whole team to a restaurant (him paying all bills of course).Originally Posted by macleopard13
Kurtinaitis loved doing such challanges like that. The result was that Rytas never lost against a weaker opponent and usually won by an impressive margin.
But he is very strict. Kemzura looks like a kitten compared to him.
On the other hand, Kurtinaitis differently from Kemzura is not afraid to play young players heavyy minutes. It was Kurtinaitis who made Gecevicius a leader of the team though he was still very young, he gave 17 year old Jonas in his debut game 25 minutes and he was constantly using young Buterlevicius and use him well (something that coaches after him were never able to do).
Kemzura in 2010 was forced to play with young core but when he has a choice he prefers going for more experienced players while Kurtinaitis is much more daring coach in that regard.
I too want to try Kurtinaitis,but some people just forgets some elements and are picturing only white (kurtinaitis) and black (kemuzra).Its just not right....They remember rytas coaching valanciunas,gecevicius,uleb cup.
But how do you think whos idea was to bring mazutis in 2009 to presure the guards? same situation with dainys in rytas team? yeah it was not butuatas idea,but kurtinaitisa.Are you sure kurtinaitis assitanst wont be butautas? they are working alot with each other,rimas went to chimki and give job to butautas in latvia team and so on.Do you want to see Kurtinaitis and butautas duet on our coaching staff again ?I just want to see one Rimas..They are saying his not affraid to play youngster i really not sure is correct.In rytas team he didnt have anything to lose because rytas didnt have alot of strong players,so he was playing everything he got there.I agree he got the best he could out of that team.But in national team situation is little bit different...Remember 2007? they without camp named 12 players and only made one substation maciulis in slanina out.But i dont remember any youngsters in 2007-2008-2009 teams that got alot playing time.I even remember coaches try to convince stombergas to comeback to natiuonal team at age of 34.I dont understand why some people are reapeting than kuirtinaitis will work only with younger players,he said many times in press THE BEST PLAYERS MUST PLAY...Are you sure he wont bring lavrinovic brothers or petravicius to a team for example ?
I always felt national team coach shuold stay 3-4 years and then you have change it,because players are not hearing him anymore after some years.I see only 3 candidates 1.Kazlauskas 2.Kurtinatis 3.Leave Kemzura .But most likely Sabas gonna take Kurtis.
Last edited by Shawshank; 08-09-2012 at 09:41 AM.
Kurtinaitis was not the head-coach but an assistant coach. You can hardly blame him for Maciulis not playing or over benching Kalnietis those were Butautas decisions. Do not overestate the assistants coach role. He can suggest, maybe he did suggest playing Maciulis or Kalnietis, how do you know? The did not play but it was Butautas decision, not Kurtinaitis. There is a reason why there was one head-coach and not two at the same time because the final decision had to take head-coach despite multiple assistants all around him (Kurtinaitis was only one of the five assitants on that team).I too want to try Kurtinaitis,but some people just forgets some elements and are picturing only white (kurtinaitis) and black (kemuzra).Its just not right....They remember rytas coaching valanciunas,gecevicius,uleb cup.
But how do you think whos idea was to bring mazutis in 2009 to presure the guards? same situation with dainys in rytas team? yeah it was not butuatas idea,but kurtinaitisa.Are you sure kurtinaitis assitanst wont be butautas? they are working alot with each other,rimas went to chimki and give job to butautas in latvia team and so on.Do you want to see Kurtinaitis and butautas duet on our coaching staff again ?
I always felt national team coach shuold stay 3-4 years and then you have change it,because players are not hearing him anymore after some years.I see only 3 candidates 1.Kazlauskas 2.Kurtinatis 3.Leave Kemzura .But most likely Sabas gonna take Kurtis.
Kurtinaitis did suggest Mazutis and he was bad but in all honesty he did look better during preparation games than Prekevicius so taking him in looked logical at that point, but Dainys? I actually liked Dainys. He was pretty fine in those minutes he got and he was even Rytas leader in preseason games. I was very fine with him taking Dainys, I dont see why you see that it was bad one? In my opinion it was actually a good decision.
Last edited by Darknemo2000; 08-09-2012 at 10:05 AM.
Ofcourse all what was bad it was butautas,all what was good in 2009 its was kurtinaitis aha
Sometimes you just have to give them a shot. Petravicius was literally unknown until he was 27 years old was noticed and given a shot.Ofcourse all what was bad it was butautas,all what was good in 2009 its was kurtinaitis aha
Sometimes you have to take a risk and take those mediocre players in hopes you can find someone better, sometimes you end up with Mazutis, sometimes you end up with Petravicius.
Kurtinaitis was sceptical about Kalnietis and he had a good last game in that tournament and had a great 2010 but looking back at Kalnietis career can you honestly say that Kurtinaitis was completely wrong about him? A lot of the sings he said about Kalnietis are actually valid even to this very day.
He is right now our main PG but it doesnt mean he is a good PG.
One of the reason why Saras tired so much out was because Kalnietis sucked and Saras had to play more time than he initially expected to.
Kalnietis dribble is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Thats what Kurtinaitis said about Kalnietis and he was and is right. Pocius and Seibutis are better dribbling the court than him, as Kalnietis dribbles the ball way too high. He has a very inconsistent shot, one of the reasons why opponents leave him space to shoot from distance - you he can hit a couple but miss 6 at that just as well. Its worthy to take a gamble on such player.
Kurtinaitis thought he cant shoot at all, he wasnt right in that aspect, but three years ago Kalnietis was worser at shooting than he is now, and even now you dont want to see him shoot even wide-open.
Dainys was fine. What the hell you are talking about? Did you even watch Rytas games? They took Dainys as the 3rd PG, and he was good at it. 3rd PG. Not a leader, not even a 2nd PG, a 3rd. They did not want to take Kelys as a PG because 3PG just doesnt get much time and young players need to spend their time on court, not on the bench. Dainys was for that. he played 5-8 minutes per game, sometimes in LKL he had more in bigger games less or none and he was fine with that and was ok while playing. Thats what you ask from roleplay players like Dainys.
I was perfectly fine with him playing as he was and he certainly was better Rytas material than say Prekevicius or Kestutis Marciulionis.
Jomantas was fine. Sometimes Zalgiris fans are too stupid to remember that Jomantas was actually one of the leaders of the Maciulis, Kleiza generation. It was natural to try him, just of course not at PG position. He did however stopped Navarro in the last game against Spain but whenever he went off the court Navarro went on bombing us to death. It was a funny game in that retrospect.
Some Zalgiris fans point at statistics and say Jomantas played too much forgetting that there were such situations like against Spain where he was NT's best defender and had to stay on one or another player so that he doesnt start lightening it up.
Nowadays it doesnt look like Jomantas on NT would be a great idea but back then it was fine. It was like trying Ulanovas from our U-20 team. After all Jomantas back in his youth NT days was one of the leaders together with Kleiza and Maciulis (he could score back then) he was doing fine on men basketball, so much that Sagadin put a young Jomantas in the starting line-up due to his defense. But that is what probably ruined Jomantas.
Since back in sagadin days he realized that he can get plenty of playing time by just defending and completely threw out his scoring and focused on his D. Nowadays its hard to believe that Jomantas in youth teams had 20 and more point games or in Siauliai scoring 27 or 29 was natural for him.
And that 2009 years would have not been nearly as bad for him if they did not try to make a PG out of Sf. For Kurtinaitis it worked with Eidson (it was under Kurtinaitis and not under Sireika or Trifunovic that Eidson started to shine) but never with Jomantas.
How the hell do you see lack of effort on their part? The problem yesterday was their shooting was off target. Linas Kleiza was one for seven. But basketball really and truly is a game of centimetres. He was off by by a centimetre or two yesterday. Had he not been off by a centimetre or two on five of those shots, people would be praising him highly today. But there was no lack of effort from the players yesterday or throughout the tournament. The reasons for their lack of success are elsewhere.
In this case I would have preferred an honest answer.
Last edited by Hepcat; 08-09-2012 at 02:24 PM.
Hmmmmm. Let's see. Kurtinaitis' salary was probably greater than that of the whole Sūduva team. In fact, the ball boy on the Rytas team was probably paid more than Sūduva's starting point guard. Do you think that maybe a better idea on his part might have been to take out the whole Marijampolės Sūduva team to a fine restaurant after the game?
Perhaps the strapping young power forward for Sakalai might (very gently of course) have pointed out to Kurtinaitis that as a construction worker by day he didn't need to be humiliated by a better financed organization by night and Kurtinaitis might look for another way to motivate his players?
Neither Kleiza nor Jasikevicius ever played any defense or even tried to play it - FACT.
The only reason why these two guys are praised for their basketball skills is because of their offensive repertoire. And whenever they have a "bad" day offensively, they become literally worthless on the court. That's why Kurtinaitis would never tolerate lazy, non-defense playing stars on his team, unless they compensated this aspect of the game with their brilliant offensive output.
Kurtinaitis doesnt give a damn how much Suduva or Sakalai earn. fact is he doesnt give a damn about those teams at all. He doesnt care enough about them to see them humiliated. What he cares about is his teams effort and performance. Since against the teams like Suduva or Sakalai you cannot put yourself out nor you cannot even have a decent practice defensively he started to do those challanges to his players so that they learn to pressure the ball even in such games against Suduva or Sakalai. Its certainly better approach than Zalgiris approach which was - just win it. Why? Because you take absolutely nothing from such games other than those points in tablet, with Kurtinaitis the team at least learned to pressure the ball defensively never easing up against opponents no matter what the difference is.Hmmmmm. Let's see. Kurtinaitis' salary was probably greater than that of the whole Sūduva team. In fact, the ball boy on the Rytas team was probably paid more than Sūduva's starting point guard. Do you think that maybe a better idea on his part might have been to take out the whole Marijampolės Sūduva team to a fine restaurant after the game?
Perhaps the strapping young power forward for Sakalai might (very gently of course) have pointed out to Kurtinaitis that as a construction worker by day he didn't need to be humiliated by a better financed organization by night and Kurtinaitis might look for another way to motivate his players?
This is what our U-16 lacked this year. A lot of games they lost they were winning at first but then let themselves relax and then never were able to get back in the games and lost one match after another.
You have to break them. Even when you lead 60 points or more, brake them till the very last second this is the best approach to the games, specially the games against underdogs. Its not red cross or charity organization to take pity on anyone or a resort to take a sweet relaxation time off. This is a basketball game.
First of all that's your opinion. I'd need quite a bit of corroboration to accept that opinion of yours as fact. The only objective measure of effort available from yesterday's game is rebounds, and Team Lietuva did outrebound a taller Team Russia 43-38.
Secondly, who are the players who play defence on the Lithuanian team in your opinion?
Last edited by Hepcat; 08-09-2012 at 05:09 PM.
Be nice to see a player from one of those teams go on to stick it to Kurtinaitis at some point, and then be very public about enjoying what he did.
Believe it or not but there are guys who prefer strict, no-nonsense approach over very lax chaos like Sireika's who allows players a lot simply because he is a very nice human person but isnt all that good as a coach.Be nice to see a player from one of those teams go on to stick it to Kurtinaitis at some point, and then be very public about enjoying what he did.
Blatt for example is certainly more strict than Kemzura and I did not see Russians complain all that much about it even though when Shved wanted to argue about one foul and Blatt simply said "You are out" to him and benched him for the rest of the game.
He may not do pushups after the game but I doubt Kurtinaitis would do those in the final stages of the tournament as well. Preparation games are all together another beast though.
We were loosing the rebound battle by 6 at the half but in the second half Kemzura limited Kleiza's minutes more and gave Valanciunas chance to play which lead to our run where Russians missed shots and Val or other players were grabbing the rebounds well.
Strange enough since Kleiza's personal rebounding stats always look very fine if not great, but as a team we better control the glass when Jankunas is on the court. Probably because Kleiza never bothers to box-oout (which was why Kirilenko had a couple of those easy put-backs against us).
Actually I was talking about a player from barely more than amateur teams such as Sakalai or Sūduva whom Kurtinaitis once humiliated.
But from what's been posted here Kurtinaitis sounds far more harsh than David Blatt. As in many/most things in life there is a middle path. Blatt may have gotten it right as a coach.
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