Zalgiris GM Motiejunas looks into new roster 8

Zalgiris Kaunas general manager Paulius Motiejunas likes the roster he was able to gather for the upcoming season and tells he was not afraid to admit to possible prospects that the last season was a failure.

Zalgiris Kaunas have already started preparation for the upcoming Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) and EuroLeague season.

Although the team doesn’t have many of its players due to their commitments to national teams, including head coach Kazys Maksvytis, the players are currently en route to playing their first friendly match on Wednesday.

Talking on the club’s subscription platform Zalgiris Insider, the club’s general manager Paulius Motiejunas offered some insight into how he sees the roster and what went on while trying to attract prospects to the team this offseason.

“I don’t want to rate the roster because it always looks on paper like the people you wanted. Characters, physical preparation, all those things help form it into a unit and we can then see whether we have a team or not like it was last year,” Motiejunas began. “In that case, you can do whatever you want and you won’t achieve a result. I usually never rate the team but I like how the process went.”

“We did not get all the first choices of ours but we like what we see now,” he explained. “We have everything for a solid season. The name, the age, and the basketball understanding are what we want.”

Zalgiris signed Keenan Evans, Kevarrius Hayes, Ignas Brazdeikis, and Rolands Smits as key figures in the team’s puzzle. However, the operative revealed that it was much harder to sign players this summer due to how the last season in the EuroLeague went.

“There are two sides of the medal. I had to change myself from a negotiation standpoint,” Motiejunas explained. “With Sarunas Jasikevicius, we had a solid base in the club. It’s strange to me that all of it seems to have disappeared after one weak season. Everyone who doesn’t closely follow Zalgiris said that Zalgiris is now a last-place team and that they wouldn’t achieve anything here, and that they want to play for a team where such a thing is possible.”

“There was a lot of anger. I know that the last season was really bad but I don’t think that we want to roam there, we have a desire to fight. One of the aspects – the convincing of the players,” Motiejunas told. “There are not promises, you tell it like it is: ‘we are not trying to convince you, we tell that we have a good gym, a good system, and wonderful fans’. You’re not afraid to tell eye to eye that we failed last year but we haven’t lost our identity.”