LTU – Butautas wishes new Lithuania coach Kemzura well
DONETSK (2010 FIBA World Championship) - Former Lithuania coach Ramunas Butautas has wished his successor with the national team, Kestutis Kemzura, good luck. Butautas resigned immediately after Lithuania’s Qualifying Round exit at EuroBasket 2009 in Poland and is now fully focused on his duties as the boss of BC Donetsk in Ukraine. “To ...
DONETSK (2010 FIBA World Championship) - Former Lithuania coach Ramunas Butautas has wished his successor with the national team, Kestutis Kemzura, good luck.
Butautas resigned immediately after Lithuania’s Qualifying Round exit at EuroBasket 2009 in Poland and is now fully focused on his duties as the boss of BC Donetsk in Ukraine.
“To work as a head coach (of Lithuania), it is not easy,” he said on the Donetsk website.
“It is an honor that not everyone experiences, and I am very glad that I had to do it.
“I sincerely wish my successor, Kestutis Kemzura, good luck.
“I am a patriot and always will be. Now I live in Ukraine, tomorrow, maybe I will live in Mozambique or somewhere else, but I'll always be Lithuanian.
“We have a small country and we all live together, and I will always be with their land and their people.”
Kemzura was an assistant coach on the Lithuania teams that played at EuroBasket 2005 in Belgrade and at the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan.
He coached Latvia at EuroBasket 2009 before applying for the Lithuania job and receiving the reins last week after agreeing personal terms.
Kemzura may coach at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey if Lithuania receive a wild card.
FIBA