By Aris Barkas
The big news of the day in the basketball crazed Lithuania is the arrival of the national team’s coach Kestutis Kemzura from the States. He was there to meet and talk with Toronto Raptors forward Linas Kleiza among others and the whole country was waiting to hear if the big star of “Lietuva” will wear the green shirt of the team this summer in the FIBA pre-Olympic tournament.
Well, the answer as you can read also in “Lietuvos Rytas” newspaper is maybe. As Kemzura said: “I didn’t get any promises, but we talked about it and he thinks that the Raptors will have a long NBA season. Of course this is something that I don’t wish. I hope that it will be time for him to relax and strengthen his leg”.
If you are a Raptors fan you may be furious now, but think again. In the summer you may see in team Lithuania the future of your team. Not only Kleiza, but also young center Jonas Valanciunas will be playing there. Yes, he is the number five pick of the last NBA draft, the new big hope of the Canadians.
Kleiza is the natural leader of the Lithuanians, something that will be more evident if 36 years old Sarunas Jasikevicius stays out of the national team. Nobody can say for sure what will happen, because everybody, no matter how old they are, wants to be in the Olympics. But Kleiza seems to be in his prime, even with the bad luck of last year’s leg injury, and he is considered the dominant figure of the team.
So it will be interesting to see if he blends well with Valanciunas, who had created a great duo with veteran play maker Saras in the last Eurobasket, playing fluently the pick and roll with him. Valanciunas stole the show, even thought Lithuania could not get to the medal round. Can he and Kleiza share the spotlight and the shots? Maybe it will be easiest for Toronto to find out before the next season’s training camp, if they play together in the courts of Venezuela for a spot in London’s Olympics.