A year ago now, Sarunas Jasikevicius (44) said:
–What does he tell me? What do they say out there that Zalgiris is Barça’s youth team? Yes, it is. And that makes me very happy.
And then he smiled.
At the time, Jasikevicius was still leading the Zalgiris bench, actually a bittersweet charge: the club remains the great Lithuanian sports power, with its five consecutive leagues. But its possibilities are limited. At the end of the day, the Zalgiris cannot stand up to the great entities of the continent, who rummage through other people’s benches and, by means of a checkbook, weaken them.
In 2018, Barça had taken Kevin Pangos.
A few days before Jasikevicius’ confession, Barça took Brandon Davies away.
It was not all: then, Barça even wanted Jasikevicius himself.
(…)
This was not new. Barça wanted Jasikevicius for a long time. This is the story of a long-term plan. Perhaps, the basketball player version of Barca football. If Xavi Hernández, hypothetical future coach, appears on the horizon of the Camp Nou, at the Palau Blaugrana the figure of Jasikevicius has been outlined for years.
Sarunas Jasikevicius, in his time as coach of Zalgiris (Other Sources)
In both cases there had been dimes and diretes. Without agreements. Both Xavi and Jasikevicius crave a personalized plan. Bring your team, form a template for you. They do not assume inheritances, they do not think about short-term projects.
And that must be worked on.
Perhaps this is how we understand Jasikevicius’ reflection, the reflection that opened this information:
– What do they say out there that Zalgiris is Barça’s youth team? Yes, it is. And that makes me very happy.
(…)
Every time Barça opened contacts with Jasikevicius, it ended in a no. There was no project to suit him. The template was not mature. The plan was not overwhelming. Jasikevicius needed to grow more as a coach …
The great plan
Jasikevicius, basketball, had a profile similar to Xavi’s in soccer: their names always come out
In one of those moments, when Barça was shipwrecked, Svetislav Pesic appeared. It happened in the middle of the 2017-2018 season, on the eve of the Copa del Rey. That was a medium-term plan. If anything, until the end of the course.
What came next was magnificent. Pesic’s return as a Barça coach was an adrenaline rush. The squad, numb in the hands of Sito Alonso (temporarily replaced by Alfred Julbe), reacted in an extraordinary way. Four games later (one from ACB and another cupbearer) he won the Copa del Rey.
So Pesic stayed. All that course and all the following.
Pesic talks with Heurtel, during the final leg of the ACB league in Valencia (Manuel Bruque / EFE)
And also all of the latter.
With Pesic in command, the new Barça project was forged. A billionaire plan that included an attempt with Pau Gasol –periodically his name appears, now also– and the signing of Nikola Mirotic, perhaps the best European player of the moment.
Or the arrivals of Pangos and Davies. And Higgins’s. And that of Abrines …
All this, Jasikevicius watched from a distance.
And, of course, it didn’t seem bad to him.
On Tuesday, in Valencia, the Baskonia of Dusko Ivanovic, another old acquaintance of Barça, ambushed Pesic. He defeated him in the frames, in the final stretch, and the ACB League that the Barça players sniffed at him. Sunk Madrid, unable to access the semifinals, Barça had been configured as the sole candidate. Single match crossings still bring surprise.
Although Pesic had one more year on his contract, his momentum was gone.
Jasikevicius’s turn.
Pesic’s goodbye
Pesic’s goodbye was intuited even before the league defeat, but the fiasco accelerated the process
“The decision was maturing some time ago,” club sources told this newspaper. Now, the truth is that we depended on the closing of the course. If Barça took the league title, the dismissal of Pesic would have been more complicated. Defeat against Baskonia has paved the way.
“And what does Jasikevicius have?” –This same source is asked.
“You have seen what you have done at the Zalgiris.” In five years, and with a very low budget, he has assembled a team so competitive that has been planted in the final four European (2018).
Your contract meets the requirements a leader asks for. Sign for three seasons. He will direct the best budget in the Europa League. It will have players whose basketball he knows well (We will see how Pangos ends, whose contract expires now). And you will have Mirotic.
In the hallways of the Palau, you are running fast right now: yesterday, in the late afternoon, the goodbye captain Ante Tomic (33). He had been at the club for eight years. He is the first player to leave.
“They were eight great years at Barça. I enjoyed every day! I played with incredible players and I am with each one of them in life and on the field, ”he said goodbye on social networks.
