Tuleb nõustuda, John Hollinger kossuturniiril mänginutest - kuigi tsiteeritud tekst on üldisem. Rõhk viimasel lõigul.
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Robertas Javtokas
Here's a story somebody ought to cover: How Lithuania is at all competitive in basketball. Lithuania has only 3.6 million people, or slightly less than the population of Oregon. It's about 1/80th the size of the U.S. and 1/11th as big as Spain or Argentina.
And though it didn't win a medal in Beijing, it reached the semifinals once again -- something it's done in all five Olympic tournaments since independence. And before that, the country essentially won a gold medal in 1988 (all but one key player on the Soviet team was Lithuanian).
Lithuania made the semis in Beijing even though two of its three NBA players sat out (Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Darius Songaila) and one of its top European stars, sharpshooter Arvydas Macijauskas, was also unavailable.
Yet this tiny country went nine deep all tournament long, had five guys hit better than 40 percent on 3-pointers, and kept pulling 6-11 guys off the bench to beat the tar out of bigs like Yao Ming and Pau Gasol.
Javtokas was part of that latter group, and showed why he'd be a competent backup center if the Spurs (who own his rights) can ever convince him to make the jump. He didn't play big minutes due to fouls but he got his licks in while he was out there, including a 15-point effort against Spain in the semis.
It's shocking for such a small country to send out such deep teams year after year; in particular, it seems demographically impossible to produce so much quality size. I have no idea how they do it.
Robertas Javtokas
Here's a story somebody ought to cover: How Lithuania is at all competitive in basketball. Lithuania has only 3.6 million people, or slightly less than the population of Oregon. It's about 1/80th the size of the U.S. and 1/11th as big as Spain or Argentina.
And though it didn't win a medal in Beijing, it reached the semifinals once again -- something it's done in all five Olympic tournaments since independence. And before that, the country essentially won a gold medal in 1988 (all but one key player on the Soviet team was Lithuanian).
Lithuania made the semis in Beijing even though two of its three NBA players sat out (Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Darius Songaila) and one of its top European stars, sharpshooter Arvydas Macijauskas, was also unavailable.
Yet this tiny country went nine deep all tournament long, had five guys hit better than 40 percent on 3-pointers, and kept pulling 6-11 guys off the bench to beat the tar out of bigs like Yao Ming and Pau Gasol.
Javtokas was part of that latter group, and showed why he'd be a competent backup center if the Spurs (who own his rights) can ever convince him to make the jump. He didn't play big minutes due to fouls but he got his licks in while he was out there, including a 15-point effort against Spain in the semis.
It's shocking for such a small country to send out such deep teams year after year; in particular, it seems demographically impossible to produce so much quality size. I have no idea how they do it.
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