ESP/LTU – Javtokas, Valencia take their game to new heights

VALENCIA (Euroleague) - Nothing drives Robertas Javtokas more than the desire to see his coaches happy, be it with Lithuania or Power Electronics Valencia.

He brought many a smile to the face of his national team boss Kestutis Kemzura last summer when captaining Lithuania to a bronze medal at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey, and Javtokas is doing the same with his Valencia boss Svetislav Pesic in Spain’s ACB and Euroleague.

The 2.10m Javtokas is quite possibly playing the best basketball of his career.

He’s moving his feet on defense and blocking shots, while also showing an array of low-post moves on offense that quite simply, no one knew he possessed.

If Javtokas gets the ball on a pick-and-roll, the defense can forget about it because the high-flying center is going to score nine times out of 10.

All of this has helped Valencia climb to third place in the ACB standings, and it’s been crucial in the Euroleague as well.

On Thursday night, when Javtokas was working hard on both ends of the floor, he had 15 points on six-of-seven shooting, five rebounds and a steal to help the club beat Fenerbahce 82-68 and reach the quarter-finals of Europe’s elite club competition for the first time.

The way the year began for Javtokas, who joined from BC Khimki in Russia and struggled, he could have only dreamed to have the kind of form that he currently has. The good times arrived when the club replaced coach Manuel Hussein with Svetislav Pesic.

"Pesic believes in me and made me believe in myself,” Javtokas said to FIBA.com.

"And I'm happy when the coach is happy.

“If the coach asks me to do something, I do it and if I see him happy, then I know that I did a great job.”

Every single player in the Valencia team is playing as well as he can right now, and that’s a tribute to the coaching staff.

Pesic is using the players’ strengths and hiding their weaknesses.

Javtokas hasn’t shown many weaknesses lately.

In Valencia’s Euroleague 80-74 win at Zalgiris in his native Lithuania last week, Javtokas was virtually unstoppable in making five of seven shots from the floor on his way to 13 points.

On Sunday at CAI Zaragoza, the big man equaled his season-high with 18 points on eight of 10 shooting.

His number one weapon?

If Javtokas isn’t rolling to the basket and catching a pass after setting a pick, he’s using a hook shot that has led some to nickname him ‘Kareem’ after the great Abdul-Jabbar.

The Javtokas hook isn’t the sky hook that Kareem used to such great effect in his career with Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Lakers, but more old school.

When Pesic showed up at Valencia, he wanted to know what was going on in the heads of all his players and Javtokas made it clear that he wanted to be as good as he can be.

“I'm going to be 31 this month (March 20) but I still want to do something,” he said after Thursday night’s win against Fenerbahce.

"He (Coach Pesic) said, 'If you can't get anything from this season, then you can finish your career.’

“So I want to get something (Javtokas laughs).”

There are so many interesting angles to the Valencia success story this season to cover.

Something that everyone agrees is that everything changed when Pesic arrived.

"When Pesic came, he brought discipline, he brought one concept that we always work and we believe in that,” Javtokas said.

“I think he made us believe in what we work for.

"And that's most important. I think we work hard.

“There aren't that many teams that work like we do. We don't have that many days off.

“We work twice per day. But as long as we're winning, I'm okay with that.”

Javtokas said immediately after Pesic’s arrival that he had enjoyed playing for him at Dynamo Moscow, but in that team, the Russian outfit didn’t find the same success.

"I worked with him in Dynamo and it was a different situation,” Javtokas said.

“The players maybe didn't believe in his concept.

“He was fighting more than us playing together.

“In this team, players right away believed in him.

“We had a coach (Hussein) and he was a great person - I don't want to say anything bad.

“We were practicing, but I don't think we were practicing hard enough.

“He didn't make us believe that we are a great team.

"But we knew it (we could be great). I'd seen the guys that had come here.”

In addition to Javtokas, Valencia had signed former Unicaja Malaga point guard Omar Cook, ex-Cajasol Sevilla forward Dusko Savanovic of Serbia, ex-Gran Canaria forward James Augustine and former Greek league sharpshooter Jeremy Richardson.

The bulk of Valencia’s Eurocup winning side was also still in the city, players like Victor Claver and Nando De Colo.

Yet the club, due in part to injuries, suffered defeat after defeat after defeat.

"When Pesic came, I knew that he was going to bring toughness,” Javtokas said.

“And toughness worked for us.

"I'm just happy that it’s worked out the way it has. I've never been on a team that we started like 10-1. We would go into every game like we'd want to win but we'd walk out down.

"Right now, I feel very good.

“We started the season very bad and right now we've made it to the final eight.

"I'm just so comfortable. I love it. We have a big team, great players - I'm just happy we're in this position.”

No one expected Valencia to make it this far.

They will have to spring an upset in a best-of-five quarter-final series against Real Madrid if they are going to make it to the Final Four.

The two clubs split their regular season meetings while Madrid beat Valencia in the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey.

"We play against Madrid and we know them,” Javtokas said.

“We know we can beat this team but also, we know that we can easily lose to it.

“We're going to go step by step. We're going to keep fighting.

“That's what I think we showed these three or four months - just keep fighting no matter what and see what happens.”

FIBA