By Dionysis Aravantinos / info@eurohoops.net
Make no mistake about it. Sarunas Jasikevicius will be the talk of the summer.
As ‘Mundo Deportivo‘ reported, FC Barcelona Lassa has made the 42-year old coach of Zalgiris Kaunas the number one goal of the off-season. As the Spanish newspaper states, the club has made some contacts with Jasikevicius the last couple of weeks, and a reunion with Barcelona and Saras does not seem far out of reach.
The Catalan club is willing to put forward a significant contract and project for the team for the upcoming years. As it was also reported, there have been advanced talks between Barcelona and Kevin Pangos, and so the ideal situation would be to sign both Pangos and Jasikevicius at Barcelona.
As for Barca, Svetislav Pesic is also an on-going process. The 68-year old coach had already said in a recent interview with ‘Mundo Deportivo’ that he is uncertain about his future in Barcelona, and during his extended break, he discovered that in life there are other things besides basketball. If Jasikevicius actually signs with the Spanish team, then Pesic would eventually depart from Barcelona.
Of course, Barcelona is one of the many teams interested in the Lithuanian coach. As it was reported on Tuesday by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Toronto Raptors and president Masai Ujiri traveled to Kaunas and had an interview with Jasikevicius about the head coaching job of the Canadian team. However, Jasikevicius is not the only candidate for the Raptors. Ettore Messina, Raptors assistant Nick Nurse, and Spurs assistant Ime Udoka are on the mix for the head coaching job.
CSKA Moscow is another team interested in the young coach. After finishing the season fourth in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, the Russian team is looking for ways to become even more competitive in Europe’s top-tier competition. The interest of CSKA has cooled the last days, as the VTB League Final Four is set to begin. Dimitris Itoudis will have to win the VTB title in order to make an appealing case that he has to remain as CSKA’s head coach.
The season is not over in the domestic league competitions, and the off-season has not begun just yet, but already there are rumors about Sarunas Jasikevicius and his future coaching team.
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