Neither basketball player nor businessman: R.Skaisgirys on rock and roll between show business and the field

You can see the whole conversation with R. Skaisgiris 15 minutes urBONUS basketball podcast.

In this text version of the conversation, we present the most interesting excerpts from it.

– Roland, you are an interlocutor who is difficult to present accurately. What projects are you currently working on?

– That trade revolves around many things: from the green course to trade, the organization of certain events, which I cannot do myself, but I have invented and implemented it.

It was now a challenge to rebuild the Silver Winches, where for some reason he was completely guilty. I created it myself, came up with it, put my money in and it survived until I left. When I left, it turned out I was guilty again (smiles). Now is the time to revive them and it will definitely be done.

In some ways, I’m still one of the pioneers of the appearance of the MAMA Music Awards, its inventors, funders, and the like. There are all kinds of projects related to summer.

I have a lot of work in Latvia: from series to all kinds of others.

Basically, what is new and exciting, I am trying to do.

It is best when someone of yours takes over the job and successfully continues it. And you’re kind of a godfather.

Maybe I have a problem that I don’t focus on one thing: I’m bored and want to do something else. But it’s great if you find a successful partner or colleague who develops everything and then you’re like a counselor.

– What personal discipline are you trying to develop to keep up with all the projects?

– Since 1999, I have not had a single business or job that is not profitable. Even if I went to zero or won litas, it was not profitable.

You wear something, you see something in the world. We may not call it a copy, but use good practices. I love it.

As a result, in fact, I don’t see much anywhere. In fact, you don’t even know a lot of things, like what’s in the air where you don’t even see me. The main work is done by those who see it. And my job is to come up with that idea, bring people together to develop it.

Sometimes it comes out, sometimes it doesn’t. As a result, he is not always in that job and does not become such a job. Although in terms of scripts, there is not a single script that would not have touched at least a little.

– Speaking of displacing ideas, mobilizing business partners and project teams, didn’t you think about trying to design a high-level basketball club in Lithuania?

– I would say it very normally: in this case, I have already come to the fact that I can freely manage the morning, renew the Falcons or make the team one of the elite in Lithuania. I am ready for it: both financially and, as I imagine, from partners and colleagues.

But this is just maturation. Whether it could develop or where to start it, I don’t know yet. Lest anyone imagine that I already have something, it still isn’t. But I’m ripe for that. The next question is where do I start.

In late June, I will present evidence in court, in a case that has been going on for six years. Perhaps the first half of the year was a turmoil among business partners. No one rejected me, but there was such an encouraging saying: Roland, let’s see how it is here, there is a slip and so on. It stopped for a few months, but then everything started to grow.

I think I have confidence. And when you are confident: you have not cheated or “disappointed” something, you restore with your work and move on.

One other thing: In business, you must want to earn more than just yourself. You must also want to earn money. Then things will be different. So there may be division questions, but here are other things (laughs).

With a loophole and mistrust, you won’t get anything out. Not for business partners or anyone else. But now, for example, I live with a great idea that fascinates me: the museum of nature. We will definitely implement it, but here you will see it in half a year.

– Do you think the current “Rytas” of business and basketball correspond to Vilnius’ potential?

– Now many are silent and talk about that Vilnius in one way or another.

We played together with Jarutis (in “Falcons”), but we were never friends, there were conflicts, we are still one position players. Realistically, I even sold it so as not to compete with it. I went to Gedvydas Vainauskas and offered to buy it for Rytas, because “Sakalas” had no money. I really had that inner feeling (smiles).

In the morning, there are owners with whom, I must say, I do not have friendly relations, it is also a matter of competition.

He could bark out loud and speak his mind. But when I say that I have matured into something: an LKL club like “Morning”, “Falcons” or something else, I still need some time so, when criticizing something, I can say how to do it and what I would do.

So let’s leave that at the question mark. But in a couple of months I will be able to say it. Or maybe implement.

– If you had to make a movie about Lithuanian basketball, what would you resist?

– Women’s. Really, from Modestas Paulauskas, to the present. It wouldn’t be women, but I would resist women. I would be looking for women who can really tell you a lot. So there would be not only a male but also a female audience.

Dailius Dargis has written a book on women (“Widows of the Black Mafia”). I think in television drama, this is the main book that should be screened.

Even after the October Revolution, as the Kremlin wives put it, all the so-called absurd workers in power were still looking for upper-class wives with a certain past. This completely determines a certain essence of dramaturgy.

Jonas Kazlauskas said to him: I would definitely invite the national team candidates to Skaisgiris, but you look at it, sitting with that cigarette in front of the screen, you build a glass of beer: what will I call it?

– Generally, basketball players first make money from basketball, and only then invest and start doing business in other areas. You have successfully made money before your basketball career. How did basketball player Rolandas Skaisgirys and businessman Rolandas Skaisgirys walk in parallel?

– He was not a basketball player or a businessman.

I’m not an entrepreneur. I have the notion that I need to earn money, but I don’t have the notion that I need that money.

Yes, I like to have a delicious drink, travel, have a luxurious house, the best possible car, everything is fine. But the business concept is that money has to make money, clear investments must be focused … I don’t have that. So I am not an entrepreneur.

Yes, I am a rich enough person, but I am not an entrepreneur. He was also not a basketball player because he did not have the goal of being a basketball player. And I clearly measure my options. If I saw Taurus Stumbris playing in fourth grade, then I realized it was already unreal.

My career as a basketball player was influenced by chance. The need for good company. Such are all the secondary things I hooked on after that. Then there was a faina to win.

Linas Kunigėlis once told me that around the year 2000 Jonas Kazlauskas said to him: I would definitely invite Skaisgiris to the national team candidates, but you look at it: sitting with that cigarette in front of the screen, you build a glass of beer: how do you do it? I will call? Bubbling … how do I tell other men then? (smile)

It did me cruelly good. I think it’s good, it turns out I was on some kind of threshold that you could invite me over (smiles). On the other hand, you regret not having put that job, but here the situation is different. During that time, I learned to read books and write differently. I found my best friends, for example, Alvydas Šlepikas, with whom he improved as a person in another direction.

Other groups came, medical groups, teachers, journalists … I had time for that and I learned a lot from it. Turns out, you don’t always need to read and know everything. Just listen and can use it. It is a superficial approach, but dramatically you are already in that field.

I remember when I came to play in Plungė, the children sat on the roof and chanted: Skaisgirys is a drop! Skaisgirys – a drop!

– In the morning, to train, during the day, to work and at night, to shoot 21 points in the Paris Racing bag defended by Tony Parker in the Ekinsta room. What were your days like then?

– It must be remembered that my diet was not like that of an athlete.

When you enter that carousel, you can’t go to bed for lunch. I have to go do something. Finally, with work, you knocked out the emotion. How many high-ranking Lithuanian basketball players couldn’t bear the excitement and didn’t sleep at night … Was it me with work and other actions that could have extinguished? Look, it’s five o’clock, you’re going to go to the game and you’re leaving. Somehow I coexisted like this.

But that doesn’t mean I went to dig the ditches. Although, of course, in negotiations, in conversations, you or other people annoy you.

– How did it turn out that you started playing your best basketball only after 30?

– I started doing physical training when I was 28-29 years old. Then I did physical training for the first time. Until then, I didn’t run or anything.

I remember when I came to play in Plungė, the children sat on the roof and chanted: Skaisgirys is a drop! Skaisgirys – a drop! I was so angry that I thought he really would have kicked my butt (laughs).

The regime started with “Lietuvos rytas”: I started playing sports, going to camps and living as a basketball player. Of course, working together. But I was already doing something, so maybe I got to that level, no matter what was there.

LKL.lt inf.

The team	Min.	Why.	Lost	Kl.	Tšk.	Naud
Falcons (2005-2006)	28:00	2.7	4.7	4.7	14.5	5.0
Falcons (2004-2005)	28:36	2.8	4.8	3.6	13.1	7.8
Falcons (2003-2004)	23:11	2.7	3.3	3.6	12.5	7.0
Athlete (2002-2003)	33:06	3.6	4.5 4.5	4.6	18.5	11.7
Athlete (2001-2002)	27:28	3.6	3.3	2.7	12.1	7.9
Falcons (2000-2001)	30:47	3.5	3.8	3.5	17.0	9.6
Falcons (1999-2000)	22:15	2.3	1.8	2.1	7.1	3.1
Falcons (1998-1999)	23:30	3.8	2.5	2.5	10.0	7.3
Construction – Lietuvos Rytas (1997-1998)	12:45	1.9	1.5	1.0	3.4	2.6
Construction (1996-1997)	27:33	3.6	3.0	2.2	7.3	5.1
Dzūkija (1995-1996)	25:49	3.3	3.7	2.8	7.9	5.4

– How did you get into the world of entertainment?

– Wherever I got, I went through basketball.

I remember when LKL opened and Linas Kunigėlis and Vytaras Radzevičius worked with marketing, television, we started to communicate. I remember that he still lived in Sunrise’s bedroom. We drank beer and met the speakers through them. It was a growing stream of real business that had never existed before. Aurelijus Silkinis and Arūnas Valinskas were around. Those common things come together automatically and you start living that. From then on, the whole Lithuanian show began.

AA. Vytautas Kernagis, Kostas Smoriginas, Šarūnas Marčiulionis: they were friends and looked at us from above. What are we doing now looking at others (smiles). Everything repeats. We were at his table, it was anger and apostasy. They were elites, and we were just creating. But this is how we enter.

From these men and friends, I got what I didn’t have when I grew up in the country: real rock and roll.

If we take the novel “Rye by the Abyss”, its main character as a teenager got true rock and roll, then I got it later. The presentation of the David Salinger Monument will take place (the conversation took place in early June) on June 19. Everyone asks: why? Let’s start with that, Salinger’s great-grandfather is from Sudarg, he is a Litvak.

During the weekend I discussed with Linas Kunigėlis. The homeland is more important to him, the homeland to me. But here the dispute is over.

I came up with such nonsense and I did it. But when asked why, I don’t know. I used to think he was a great climber. But after that, I think I’m not in those titles. Where much has been done, there is none. That’s what I thought: maybe you need to be in them? (smiles) I don’t know. But kaifas when you do something different.

– If you had to make a movie about the legendary trio of “Falcons” – Skaisgiris, Erikas Kučiauskas and Rolandas Matulis, what kind of story would you try to tell people? What was special about your adventure?

– Go on – it’s not over.

The three of us are very different (smiles). They let me comment. It allowed me to direct what I cruelly liked. I have long realized that there is only one moment or my character or opinion here. That things are really quite different. I think they and I both liked it brutally.

I would say there was not much rock and roll with these men. They are cruelly educated, very intelligent and educated people. They were never rock and roll. They went through a fairer life, more sincerely than I or the rest of my environment. As a result, I still feel the fullness of life with them today. For me, this is the most important thing.

We all know each other. We did not do any nonsense. But there was a brutally calm life with them. He is like that now. Apparently he didn’t have that anywhere else. Because he had a different pathos elsewhere.

It had value here. As for them, I don’t know, but I think it’s a concept of friends that is calm.

But when it comes to basketball, yes, we understood each other in the blink of an eye. But that doesn’t mean … For example, we have a fight with Kučiauskas. I remember, Matulis broke my nose, my blood was going there, and Kučiauskas leaned over and said not to pretend: there was nothing here.

There was everything (smiles). But when I talk about rock and roll, I am talking about a complete departure towards the other clouds (smiles).

– Another project of yours these days is the 3×3 basketball association and the Hoptrans 3×3 basketball tournament in Palanga from July 3 to 25. with LKL players. What is the vision of this idea of ​​yours?

– 3×3 basketball is gaining popularity in the world in big steps. But we are still a long way from that.

Serbs, for example, have included this sport in their lessons for three years. It is an Olympic sport that, for example, collects 20,000 in the Philippines. Spectators 3,000 people are already gathering in Slovenia. spectators

We are a young organization with no money, so when you think, why does an LKF or LKL have to believe in me? I think there is a certain past for that, human cognition. I thanked them more for realizing the essence of the idea without hesitation.

What level of quality will we obtain? I would like it to be 100%, but I don’t think we avoid holes. But those people came to the rescue. Some gave the name, others interceded, others helped with funds, relations with FIBA, etc. I just wouldn’t have done all that. It could have, but with much less quality and less notoriety.

What is the purpose of all this? Stay up to date with everyone. 3×3 is an endless basketball fanatic.

I need to get people out of the subconscious that it’s just street basketball in any weather and condition. That is no longer the case. Of course, anyone can play sports. And FIBA ​​has the saying “From the street to the Olympic Games” for this sport. Everything is fine. But realistically, it should create comfort for both players and spectators, with outdoor arenas, good fights, knowledge of the rules.

For it to prosper and go, I have to create fashion. No one says 3×3 will power regular basketball – there will be enough room in the world for everyone. In this case, normal basketball only helps me. When they said a year ago that maybe it’s not interesting that we don’t, now they help me. I think 3×3 will stay on a certain line.

Playing 3×3 is brutally fun. You can watch for hours and hours. Because it is a very fast game. There is no time to get a technical foul because you are always in action. Like the viewer.

The Hoptrans 3×3 tournament will air on YouTube. FIBA and certain people have assured us that we will reach an audience of 50 million a month. Is awesome. FIBA is already taking this project as an example and will try to share it with other countries.

Due to the pandemic, we had to watch for three months, which was better: LeBron or Jordan. It would be an innovation here that will bring bread and games.

I am very grateful to the sponsors because there is a social moment here at the same time. Many players have lost money, the clubs have also lost. It is here, at least in this way, where we can make a social contribution to their lives.

It is made up of many ingredients that encourage that fun. We had a long discussion at the LKF meeting, but I am absolutely convinced that if we work with determination, in 2024. in the Olympics we can have a 3×3 women’s team. But you need to work on purpose. And of course if there are no stitches between associations and the like.

Realistically, not everyone will become a basketball player for the Lithuanian national team. Everything is limited AND 3×3 opens up more opportunities for other basketball players.