He ain't tellin' nothing.
Well, it wouldn’t be the 2010 Lithuanian Basketball League championship without the daily Vladimir Romanov story in advance of the next game, the third consecutive in which Žalgiris Kaunas will play without an official head coach.
Apparently, the Žalgiris owner made the trip over to Vilnius with the team’s sports director Šarūnas Sakalauskas to watch at courtside game five of the championship series, in which Žalgiris’ spontaneous play was no match for home team Lietuvos Rytas. A sheaf of papers was conspicuously clutched in Romanov’s hands throughout the game and the owner occasionally pointed tidbits out to Sakalauskas during the match.
Well, today, morning newspaper Lietuvos Rytas – yes, the sponsor of Žalgiris’ competition in the finals – is reporting on the contents of the mysterious A4 pages. In what the ‘paper is calling a possible effort to “address the challenge of how to curb internet commenters” – the Lithuanian-language headline reads “V.Romanovas sprendė uždavinį, kaip pažaboti internautus?” – Romanov had actually printed out and was mulling over comments critical of his recent moves from the internet.
Romanov's papers; image courtesy Sportalas.com
Though you’d think the implementation of the best-laid plans of Lithuanian basketball devotees might actually make a stupid kind of sense given the coaching vacuum currently sported by Žalgiris, but Romanov had apparently chosen the more personally offensive, incendiary notes to pore over.
No telling how much truth there is in this story, BallinEurope sorely hopes it’s true and that a nice healthy selection of suspicion from this site made it into Romanov’s self-flagellatory pages.
O, and for soccer fans, the unfair dismissal lawsuit against Romanov by former Hearts coach Csaba László was filed earlier this week; László was canned with 18 months remaining on his contract. Managing to stay in the position with Hearts for 18 months, however, made László the longest-lasting coach since Romanov took over the team in 2005 – and most likely the longest-lasting coach under Romanov in any sport in any country.
Game five of the LKL finals between Lietuvos Rytas and Žalgiris Kaunas tips off at 7.10pm local time (6.10pm CET, 12.10pm EST) tomorrow night. Watch live at the Lietuvos Rytas website.
