PRIENAI, Lithuania — Prienai Arena sits at the end of a windy road on the outskirts of this small town among the forests and mineral springs of central Lithuania. Go past a crude, brick, communist-era storage shelter and you’ll find the current home of 19-year-old LiAngelo and 16-year-old LaMelo Ball, the new sensations of this basketball-crazed nation.
The smell of stale sweat hangs in the gym, despite it being barely six years old. Three rows of seats are behind the team benches; eight rows are on the other side. Staples Center this is not. It’s barely Chino Hills High. But this is the 1,500-seat home of a pro team, Birstonas-Prienai Vytautas, thrust into the international limelight as the Balls’ launch pad for their pro careers, starting tonight.
Don’t let the modest trappings fool you. LaVar Ball, their father orchestrating their careers, is throwing them into the cauldron of a basketball hotbed, beginning with the first game on Tuesday. Lithuania has only 2.9 million people. It may stump 95 percent of Americans on a geography quiz. But its basketball is world class. Its national team has a room full of international glory. Some arenas in its pro league, the LKL, are as loud as Allen Fieldhouse without the band.
“For them it’s not going to be easy,” said Dainius Adomaitis, the Lithuanian national coach who coached four years in the LKL. “The first thing is it’s completely different basketball. It’s not high school basketball; it’s not NCAA basketball.”
The Balls are following brother Lonzo into pro ball basically straight from high school. This would be more common without the NBA’s one-and-done rule. That analysis has only one flaw.
“I look at a 16-year-old playing pro basketball, what comes to mind are players like Kobe and LeBron James out of high school,” said Jerry Johnson, a former Rider star playing for Neptunas Klaipeda, his second stint in Lithuania. “I know what level those guys were. These guys aren’t close to that level.”
First, a word about Lithuanian basketball. It’s the only country in Europe where basketball is the No. 1 sport. When it won the European championship in 1937, famed Lithuanian tenor Kipras Petrauskas interrupted his performance to announce the news. The crowd rose and sang the national anthem.
The Soviet Union team that won the 1988 Olympic gold medal featured four Lithuanian starters. Lithuania has won three Olympic bronzes and three EuroBasket titles. In the LKL, Lietuvos rytas won the EuroCup, Europe’s second-tier club competition, in 2004-05. Zalgiris is 10-6 in the EuroLeague, Europe’s top club association.
The Balls’ adjustments will be big enough off the court. This past week it’s been in the mid-30s. Lithuania’s latitude means less than eight hours of daylight a day in winter. Few people over 40 speak English.
But Lithuanian basketball may seem even more foreign to them.
“It’s very physical,” said Rashaun Broadus, formerly of Brigham Young who played for five teams in Lithuania. “It’s the old school game of the NBA: Bad Boy Pistons and Bulls.”
Added Adomaitis: “The most important thing about Lithuanian basketball is team basketball. We like to share the ball. The second thing is we are not very athletic players so we have to play with our heads. Lots of tactics and special situations, special offenses.
“In Lithuania you need to think.”
They also won’t play in a vacuum. Besides the reality TV show and ESPN following their every move (“LaMelo has struggled early with his shot,” read one practice report) and LaVar’s every word (“LaVar Ball says Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton has lost the team,” headlined another), Lithuanian basketball fans may be more critical.
Lithuanians can all shoot. Fans won’t tolerate 25-foot airballs. But that’s not all.
“It’s not as easy as it may be because you’re playing overseas,” Johnson said. “I’ve seen players leave college, lead Division I in scoring, and come over here and not make it. It happens all the time. NBA players come over and can’t deal with it.”
If the Ball had picked a spot more different than L.A., it may be on another planet. Prienai’s greatest fame before the Balls was hosting the world gliding championships every other year.
It has 9,900 people and is 60 miles west of Vilnius, the capital. It looks like any other small town with a little Soviet architecture thrown in although it was nearly renovated after Lithuania declared independence in 1990.
So no wonder mayor Alvydas Vaicekauskas smiled broadly while discussing the Balls as if they were a new convention center. When the Balls landed Thursday, the media mob made it look like they were the 2010 Lakers. Suddenly, everyone can pronounce Prienai (PREE-ah-nay).
“All Lithuania is interested in basketball so Prienai is not an exception,” said Vaicekauskas who will go the first game. “People here also follow the current events related to basketball. The Ball family coming to Prienai is great excitement to all of us because it’s news which affects basketball in Lithuania.”
Even the mayor admits Prienai doesn’t have a proper restaurant. Its choice of fine dining may be Tango Pizza where it displayed an electronic crawl board reading “PRIENAI GOT BALLS!!!!”
“We are a small town,” owner Jaunius Malisauskas said. “Not so many things are going on. At first, nobody knew what’s going to happen. But when everybody saw the media attention from all over the world, they got it.”
The Balls won’t be slumming. They’re in Birstonas (BEER-shtone-as), five miles from Prienai. Birstonas (pop. 2,600) is a resort town featuring three of Lithuania’s top mineral spas. Their Vytautas Mineral Spa is a sprawling white building set back from a manmade lake. The Balls rub elbows with tourists cruising the lobby in bathrobes.
The relaxation ends Tuesday when Vytautas hosts Kauno Zalgiris-2. It’s one of five developmental LKL teams made up mostly of prospects the Balls’ age and who replace the older Baltic League competition. The Big Baller Brand Challenge is an ode to the Balls’ inexperience. They may make their LKL debut for last-place Vytautas Saturday.
For at least one night, much of the basketball world will focus on tiny Prienai and two brothers from Chino Hills High.
Said Artiom Trettjak, a bartender at Bir Bur Bar in Birstonas. “They are like a phoenix. No one knew them before. Everyone knows them now.”