For the first time, Lithuania’s second-biggest city Kaunas will host the Euroleague Final Four. Many basketball fans are looking forward to that event even though their club BC Žalgiris did not make it to the tournament.
The event will take place on May 19-21 and generates excitement among fans and experts alike.
“To have the Final Four, to have the best teams of the Euroleague participate, it seems like a surreal dream,” basketball commentator Rytis Kazlauskas points out.
Mantas Vedrickas, head of event organisation at Žalgirio Arena in Kaunas puts it this way: “It’s probably the one event that we were trying to get in Kaunas, in Lithuania, since this venue was built.”
That means Kaunas was waiting for that chance for more than ten years. “And for us, to finally have it, for a city that has a population of 300,000 and a country that hasn’t even three million, I think it’s one of the biggest sports events that we could get here and we are really happy about it.”
Žalgiris’ assistant coach Gintaras Krapikas thinks that the spectators in Kaunas deserve that the Final Four takes place in the arena, “where people love basketball very much and I would also say that they understand it”.
The city’s basketball club BC Žalgiris cannot participate, though, as Kaunas lost in the playoffs against FC Barcelona.
“Barcelona is the second team in the Euroleague for Lithuania,” one fan points out after the defeat, “because Šarūnas is an unbelievable coach from Lithuania.”
He refers to Šarūnas Jasikevičius, the Catalan club’s coach and former player of the Lithuanian national team. The country prides itself on many successful coaches and players like Arvydas Sabonis, whose son Domantas is now also playing in the NBA. Many even talk of basketball as a second religion in Lithuania.
One reason why people like the sport so much has to do with its long tradition, explains Krapikas who won several titles as a player with Žalgiris Kaunas and the Lithuanian national team in the 1980s and 90s.
“We became European champions for the first time in 1937,” Krapikas points out, “with the help of Lithuanians who had emigrated to America, come back, and taught us the game.”
Two years later, in 1939, Lithuania was able to win the title for a second time.
When Lithuania was involuntarily part of the Soviet Union, the sport had a very special meaning for many. Žalgiris Kaunas won the Soviet championships three years in a row from 1985 to 1987.
“Those were the days when the name of Lithuania was shouted out loud,” basketball commentator Kazlauskas explains. “Basketball was a tool in that sense of making us loud, making our dreams loud.”
According to Kazlauskas, the sport even played its part in fermenting a national movement: “Basketball was a little spark. And from other little sparks in other sectors, we made the fire burning for our independence.”
Soon after regaining independence, the Lithuanian national team won a bronze medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Some were calling it “the other dream team” in reference to the famous US national team.
All this helps explain why basketball was so popular in Lithuania and still is today. Tickets for the Final Four were sold out within a couple of hours. Several thousand fans are expected to visit the city, many from abroad.
And even though many local fans in Kaunas could not get a ticket, they are still enthusiastic. “This is such a huge thing for Kaunas and Lithuania,” one Žalgiris supporter said. “It’s a really big thing, you know. It’s really good.”
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