Laurynas Birutis is having one of the most productive seasons among European draft prospects. He has been a major contributor of BS Siaulai team all year long either in Lithuanian (where he is currently the best either scorer & rebounder) and Baltic League.
Obviously he didn’t arrive out of nowhere and his name was present in the list of the most interesting prospects from 1997 generation. He was standout of always loaded Zalgiris reserve team, had great summer with U20 NT and played for Vytautas in LKL before it became famous because of Ball brothers.
Despite the considerably low level of competition in BBL, there is no quality slump when Birutis faces best domestic rivals which play in major international competitions. He even outplayed Zalgiris which he is loaned from and was praised by coach Sarunas Jasikevicius. Moreover statistics visible below don’t include monster showing in Quarter-Finals of the SIL-King Mindaugas Cup where Birutis exploded for 35 points & 11 boards on 14/22 FG% vs Euroleague final eight caliber team.
Talented 7-footer really improved physically since last year. He runs more fluid and bothers opponents with his long arms. His confidence level got better and he is pretty much dominant vs more experienced pro players at the age of 20. Hard-nosed, no nonsense player who is always in the right place at the right time on both sides of the court can make any roster with his size and reasonable offensive array if they only survive defensively. However sticking long term or finding good role is different animal. Is Birutis really not only NBA prospect but actual future member or the game of basketball has evolved too much?
MOBILITY vs AWKWARDNESS
Even though Birutis is definitely more mobile or before everything else also faster and highlights could suggest that he is great lob target, there is still a lot of work to do. Powerful jams are mixed with inexcusable unsuccessful dunk trials or very uncoordinated and predictable short face up drives.
MID RANGE
His mid range technique is definitely not textbook like. The release is low (which is not not a big deal considering the overall reach and that bigs mostly shot only while given time + space) and just looks bizzarre. However he made promising 18 from 40 jumpshots during 2017/2018 season. While I wouldn’t expect hit to step out to take threes regularly next seasons, ocassional one or two Js per game from medium distance are always appreciated by your center especially in Europe.
DEFENSE
Opponents are very opportunistic in looking for missmatches against Birutis. Teams often go small on purpose just to take him as far away from the basket as possible and punish his poor lateral foot speed. More than 16% of opponents offense in LKL vs Laurynas come from iso situations (less than 10 other players face it more frequently). For example the most isolation heavy club – Nevezis executes this kind of play only 7% of time. In Baltic League it was around 12% but it can be explained by lower talent level which means lack of athletic bigs capable of stretching the court or making straight line drives as well as quick guards who get downhill at will. It doesn’t really get better regarding pick and roll D. Birutis is having hard times guarding the bigs who can pop. Clips below show example of dealing with good Americans from 4-5 position who can face up.
As expected he has really hard times recovering and covering enough ground to contest the shots effectively.
Moreover despite being 7-foot he allowed over 1.2 ppp around the basket and almost 1.1 on post up situations.
THE EFFICIENCY
Birutis scores amazing 1.2 ppp in LKL. Only Rokas Giedraitis and Gytis Masiulis are more efficient from those who made more than 45 field goals. It gets even more impressive if we consider that no one besides his teammate Donatas Sabeckis and Renaldas Seibutis had more possessions than Laurynas this season.
LOW POST
There is fairly big amount of tall players in LKL so low post efficiency is promising and seems translatable. On the other hand BBL lacks solid centers and many of the are undersized. This results as Birutis on the low block being more frequently used type of play by Siaulai offense thanks to mentioned height advantage. Also finally the gap in the levels between leagues is visible in this category. In Lithuania, Laurynas is classified on 12th place with 1.128 points per possession (however leads the table with at least 75 attempts) and in Baltic League records 2nd best 1.234 ppp, matchable only for players with small statistical sample.
HOPE
Beside obvious push of athletic limitations in order to get quicker elevation to either protect the rim or finish without troubles against different speed of the game, covering more ground defensively or stepping out behind the arc, there is one more thing. Look at those great high low passes with oldschool flavour. If he only learns to operate them on the move after short roll then it could be really big advantage. Birutis makes average 1.2 assist per 36 in LKL but also very promising almost 2.1 in Baltic League.
Despite productivity, future doesn’t seem that bright for Birutis regarding the NBA chances. Even if drafted it’s hard to project any of his skill translating to the best league in the world. He is still more of a throwback and doesn’t fit in any mold of recent bigs. His perimeter defense would look really poor on that level, he is not super skilled to impact the game with his craft or stretch the floor consistently and lacks athleticism to be impactful dunker/rebounder/shot blocker type of center. There might be less and less 7 footers next years in NBA. Human body is just build this way. When you are + 213cm tall, your foot speed and agility has its limitations. There are exceptions but not even 30 of them all over the world in order to supply every team in the league.
Anyway future in Europe with different spacing and tempo is really bright. Next season I expect him to have big minutes in Zalgiris rotation and if Saras stays, then everyone knows how big progress everyone did under him. This would clearly give good situation to make a jump to bigger money in other best Euroleague teams in future.
