Everything Valanciunas

[rocwell]

oh, i remember myself falling asleep when trying to watch raptors games couple of years ago... Usually during halftime break, around 3.30 am... Those were the times. Now i am enjoying raptors games at 10-11 am, as the guy would say "birthday everyday".

10-11 am?

[RandomGuy]

10-11 am?

Yeah, different time zone.

[rocwell]

Yeah, different time zone.

Where do you live? Australia by any chance?

[Jclaw]

I like the artifice linked from the main page on 8pts9sec. It gives three options on how to stop JV and concludes that each is unlikely to work.

[DanH]

I like the artifice linked from the main page on 8pts9sec. It gives three options on how to stop JV and concludes that each is unlikely to work.

I do like that the third (and in the author's opinion, most likely to be used) strategy is "well, try to do what we are already doing better."

[92TillInfinity]

Nice comment from a Lithuanian fan from the front on Valanciunas "No Pressure," which is also a great read.

No Pressure

"Hi! His home town is Utena (28k of population), which is really small even in the small country like Lithuania. JV is big for Lithuanian's for already long time. Started to be a real star after U19 super MVP performance and Gold medal (while youth basketball is not very popular in our country it was something amazing - even though Final was in Neighbor country capital, it was fully crowded by our fans). After he started to play for national team, which is top world level and in couple of years became a leader of it, which he will be in RIO Olympics as well. We have to understand that participating in Olympics is something very hard for non USA teams and competition outside is huge (only two teams from Europe qualify) and teams like France with full NBA starting line up (where Tony Parker is not the main player for sure) could not achieve this. So JV being a leader of such a team which have amazing battles every year in international games, gives him huge amounts of experience. While now Indiana not double him on their defense, in Europe and World cups or Olympics he is double all the time since he was 19-20 years old. Regarding Toronto Raptors - off course all country knows where he plays and what he represents across the Ocean. We not only know - we all read articles about his game at night (cause most of the games are played when in our country we have 2 or 3 at night), we analyse games and so on. We all kinda hated couch Casey during his decision to not play him in last quarters last year, while we were very happy that he was starting under same couch on his first season in Toronto. Though we still know that he is better than you have an opportunity to see. We never understand how can he get so few chances to touch basketball when he has ability to finish in highest percentage in the team and if doubled he can throw back. But couch somehow gives a ball to less effective shooters instead, to have a ball 10 times more often. But this discussion will never end and it should not. Anyway a lot of young people are not sleeping and watching Raptors games not only on playoffs but on regular season as well. And for example while Casey is not happy while Raptors plays on the midday - for us it is like a birthday. These NBA games are often commentated by our national TV "Stars" because in our country everyone knows enough to commentate a basketball game and everyone loves to have a chance to do so. Anyway, regarding JV's family - grown up with his mother (divorced), but it seems he has good relations with his father as well, interesting that his father's surname is Vilkas, which means Wolf. His parents both lives in the same town Utena where JV grew up. JV married a year or two ago and has a kid already. One thing which Toronto fans n Canada does not feel a lot is his Comedian talent (due to language barrier), but you will get it more and more as he learns it perfectly. I do not know what to say more, cause i can write a book on Raptors and JV "

So basically, he is Vilkas from Skyrim?

[RandomGuy]

Where do you live? Australia by any chance?

Yeah, Melbourne.
Oh and btw, I saw a Raptors fan with JV jersey here.

[Nilanka]

[Jangles]

Love this guy

[KHD]

even JV's smile emotes have a beard.

[A.I]

even JV's smile emotes have a beard.

Harden who?

[SkywalkerAC]

stud.

[ball4life]

27 mins 14 boards. they cant stop him. Enough said.

They as in Pacers. Not Refs. of course they (the refs) did a good job today.

[DanH]

27 mins 14 boards. they cant stop him. Enough said.

They as in Pacers. Not Refs. of course they (the refs) did a good job today.

Best part is that so many of JV's efforts end in the ball going out of bounds off a Pacer, or him drawing a loose ball foul, which both result in possession but don't count as an individual rebound.

With JV on the court, the Raptors retrieved 42% of available offensive rebounds. So on your misses, there's almost a 50/50 shot you are getting another possession. That's crazy.

[consmap]

Best part is that so many of JV's efforts end in the ball going out of bounds off a Pacer, or him drawing a loose ball foul, which both result in possession but don't count as an individual rebound.

With JV on the court, the Raptors retrieved 42% of available offensive rebounds. So on your misses, there's almost a 50/50 shot you are getting another possession. That's crazy.

That's good, because there have been a lot of misses lately