Jankūnas, who attributed part of his laurels to Milaknis’s 3-pointers: “Artūras is one of the best pitchers in the history of the Euroleague” / News

Paulius Jankūnas, who posted an empty three-point stretch in the Euroleague, finally finished the series, which, according to Žalgiris, had already caught the attention of bettors.

Kaunas captain “Žalgiris” together with Artūras Milaknis joked that the betting companies even started betting that the attacker would open an account for accurate long shots only after sunrise 2021.

Still, the 36-year-old veteran overturned such predictions just over two weeks before the New Year.

“I said that too, but I threw it away earlier, it probably means to me to some extent that what they predicted didn’t happen,” Jankūnas was in a good mood at the press conference. – There were no bets (on the team). The triples are not my strong point and I don’t really survive because of that. ”

Jankūnas had lost 10 pitches in 13 games before the game with Vitorija “Baskonia”. After scoring the first nine minutes of the match in a duel with the Basques, the Kaunas player then decided by another three points advantage, but did not reach the goal.

Reviewing 18 points out of three out of 26 (69%) for Žalgiris, the captain gleefully said that he had contributed to this result not only in person with the single long pitch, but also on the chances created for another veteran Artūras Milaknis.

The latter fired at the Basque basket in an almost unmistakable way: five shots out of seven, so necessary for the 34-year-old Žalgiris in terms of confidence, reached the goal.

– How important was it for Artūras Milaknis to hit those five triples when he had a rather difficult section lately? – the journalists asked Jankūnas.
– Essential. As we joke in the locker room, I’ve probably contributed more to his 3s today and he really owes me a drink. But Arthur needed a good game, to feel good and throw those pitches. That he didn’t score some games, I don’t see a problem. We know how Arthur throws, what level of sniper he is and it was only a matter of time before he played, no need to panic. Of course, he is very important in the team and he would like to pitch like that all the time. But we are not robots and we cannot shoot five 3-pointers every day, especially in the Euroleague, when everyone knows him, Arthur is one of the best pitchers in the history of the Euroleague. Everyone pays a lot of attention to him, believe me, it’s really not easy for him to play.

– How much automatic play occurs in defense and how much does it help the team?
– Everything in defense is around 100 percent. work, understand where something should be placed, where something should change. We’ve really been talking a lot on defense over the past few weeks, and that conversation makes it so much easier. There may be five best defenders on a team, but if they don’t speak, there will be a lot of mistakes. But if you speak in advance, give information, your teammate prepares for some action, things get much easier. Of course, the new man. coach, a new defense and it takes time to figure it out.

Perhaps we finally realized that speaking up in defense helps us and makes things easier for us. When we had a series of bad games, we all realized that we would not win by attack. Attack works more or less during those losses, but what we lacked is defense. There will be mistakes all the time, but there should be no such mistakes when someone has not spoken or easily failed (the opponent). We cannot give anything for free to opponents.

– Five from the bench, Nigel Hayes is the third, the fourth is you, Augustine Rubit is the fifth. What does this arrangement bring to the team?
– I think then we are very big. First of all, we fight well for the balls both in defense and attack. This is something very important. Although Nigel is a fourth-place player, he is athletic and talented enough to defend in third place. As many may find it strange, perhaps he creates even more problems in attack by playing the third number than the fourth because he is bigger and stronger against all his opponents. With those five, we are mobile, great. When you get the ball back, we have Luka (Lekavičius) or Rokas (Jokubaitis) in those five, who are very fast, and then they run quickly to attack. Basketball gets faster, and after good defense, the attack is lighter and better all the time.

– Observing from the outside, it seems that lately you have been more nervous and faster. Can you say that now you feel better physically in recent years?
– Thank God I don’t have any physical problems now, and I’m very happy about that, I feel very good physically. Thanks for praising the jump. It may not have improved, but I feel great. As for my speed zone, I feel like I’m playing in the maximum zone.

– Two wins in a row after a series of losses. What did not help the most to break a difficult moment in which you had every opportunity to do so?
– Another poster is to praise the club, which reacted and took measures that gave results. Of course, we also understand that nobody wants such a long series of five, six losses. Nobody wants to feel bad after a game, everyone wants to come out as a winner. Once you’re down, you realize that you need to defend and speak up and give away, and team play has to be. We are not an individualistic team that will win a game with the effort of one player or another. We have to play a team game, defend aggressively and strongly, and in attack we have players who can shoot. The game improvement also leads us to have two wins (in a row) and move on.