It’s June, your favorite team is playing in the finals, they’re the odds-on favorite to win it all, and your mom just made pizza pockets. Life is good.
This has been the reality for fans of one Lithuanian basketball team every year for the past 27 years.
Absoliutus Dominavimas
The team is BC Žalgiris and it has absolutely dominated the Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) since its inception in 1993-94.
Consider these stats:
- 23 LKL Championships
- 1 EuroLeague Championship
- 9 of the 15 Lithuanian players to play in the NBA are Žalgiris alumni
This is Thanos with all six Infinity Stones types of dominance. Roman Reigns’ level of winning. Even the late 50s/early 60s Celtics who made ten consecutive Finals appearances would blush like a shy schoolgirl at this kind of sheer mastery.
To what does the club owe its un-rivaled success?
First, selecting and developing young talent. This is a big one since European leagues don’t have annual drafts to select new, already-developed, college-level talent. They must instead identify and develop players themselves via youth programs.
Žalgiris, which literally translates to “green wood” like what a Leprechaun experiences in the morning, has been one of the very best at this.
The club’s junior team is credited with honing the skills of among others, Rimas Kurtinatis – the only player to ever participate in the NBA’s Three-Point Contest without ever actually playing in an NBA game, Donatas Montiejunas, Arnoldas Kulboka, and the guy who the junior team is now named after – Arvydas Sabonis.
The team’s name recognition has also enabled it to sign some of the best foreign free agents, like Tyus Edney who helped Žalgiris win its first EuroLeague championship in 1998-99, Kenny Anderson, and most recently Emmanuel Mudiay, but the last one didn’t really work out.
Second, the most competition Žalgiris has faced in the LKL in any given year is twelve other teams.
I’m not making the “plumbers” argument here, as to the best of my knowledge no LKL players service heating and cooling apparatuses during the off-season. But it’s also not the most competitive league in Europe either.
The fact that the team has had limited success in EuroLeague play against squads from other countries adds credibility to the big fish in a guppy pond claim.
The Biggest Fiasco in Club History
My timing never has been the greatest. As it finally happened…
This past season Žalgiris failed to make the LKL Finals for the first time in the league’s history, snapping their 27-year streak.
They also finished 15th in the EuroLeague, one spot above a trio of disqualified Russian clubs😢
Despite some “boycotts” by fans who have called the past season “the biggest fiasco in club history” and who evidently have had it so good, for so long that they forgot what losing is.
Žalgiris remains the most popular team in the country and will always be synonymous with Lithuanian basketball and with dominating the local league with an iron fist, not a curtain✊
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