By Simonas Baranauskas
It looked as if Lithuanian basketball had managed to salvage its pride after it was announced that qualification to Euroleague will continue to be run through the domestic league, instead of the VTB League as planned.
However, it was far from being the end of the story, as the already loaded schedule of Lithuanian powerhouses Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas became even more over-packed with format changes in the VTB League, Euroleague and Eurocup.
The Lithuanian League (LKL) did end up paying quite a steep price, even despite saving its relevance by keeping the Euroleague qualification spot. On Tuesday, it was announced that the two major Lithuanian clubs will only play away games in the regular season of the domestic championship.
With Lietuvos Rytas and Zalgiris having all the influence in the league’s board, it wasn’t hard to have the system approved. However, it is said that both teams wanted to pull out of the regular season entirely, but the Lithuanian Basketball Federation (LKF) would have said no, therefore a consensus was reached
By playing only half of the games in the regular season (actually, a bit more than half, as, despite playing all the other teams only once, Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas will meet each other twice), the two strongest clubs will be able to cut down on their schedule without hurting the interests of the smaller clubs.
However, it just goes on to show that the domestic championship is not rated highly neither by Zalgiris, nor Lietuvos Rytas, who have clearly expressed their priorities with such changes.
In fact, it might not be the end of format changes in LKL, as a suggestion to have the two major clubs enter playoffs only from the semifinal stage is on the table of the league’s board and is planned to be approved in a meeting later on in the month.
According to the system, teams that finished 5-8 in the regular season would fight it out for two quarterfinal spots (5 vs 8, 6 vs 7) and would face the teams who finished fourth and third in the regular season accordingly.
The two teams advancing from the quarterfinals would only then go on to face Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas.
It is almost certain that both of the clubs will pull out of the Baltic Basketball League (BBL) and the Latvian champions VEF Riga might follow them too. In that case, BBL’s Elite Division and the Challenge Cup might be botched together into one competition.
The changes in the BBL system could lead to even more changes in LKL, as the league is considering switching to a four-round system if teams (obviously not Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas) required more games.
However, there have been some positive news amongst the perhaps not so pleasant ones, as the league has finally decided to limit migration amongst the teams, allowing players only one transfer between LKL clubs throughout the whole season. This has been an issue, with Zalgiris moving around young players to and from related clubs mid-season.