Ancient like no other, the old Palau is also robust like no other, capable of withstanding the most intense earthquakes. Also what was experienced yesterday in a frenetic day in the noble area of ??Blaugrana basketball, where what is already, without a doubt, a full-fledged cycle change was woven. To the confirmed farewell of Mirotic, the team’s franchise player, Sarunas Jasikevicius has been added as a surprise, as he has not reached an agreement to renew his contract and will be replaced by Roger Grimau on the bench.
This chain of decisions forces us to take a step back to be assessed with due distance.
Barça and Jasikevicius had been negotiating the renewal of the Lithuanian for months. Over the course of the season, the positions have drifted apart to the point that for a while there wasn’t even a dialogue. But in the last leg of the competition, in which Jasikevicius was able to bring the team back from limbo after the painful European KO and lead them to the League title, everything had straightened out. The club wanted him to continue and the coach had agreed to reduce his salary to try to fit within the strict budget reduction policy imposed by Joan Laporta in all spheres of the club. But Barça’s demands and the Lithuanian’s efforts never crossed paths, and in a club held back by a war economy, everything was rushed in just a few hours.
With the farewell of Jasikevicius ends a stage that should have been one of the most glorious in the section thanks to a battle full of stars, but which has stopped halfway. The Lithuanian leaves with two Leagues and two Copas del Rei as his most outstanding titles, and also with three appearances in the final four of the Euroleague. But he has not been able to find the key to take the final step and regain European glory by achieving the longed-for third continental scepter for the club, which has continued to be resisted since 2010.
And perhaps in this line the choice of Barça can also be understood, which is accompanied by enormous symbolism. Roger Grimau, 44 years old, will sit on the bench for the next two seasons. Grimau was until now the coach of the subsidiary (Barça Atlètic) and the junior team. It’s a house bet, with the financial savings that this entails. But it is also a nod to the past, since as captain of Barça he was responsible for lifting the club’s second Euroleague more than thirteen years ago, on May 9, 2010, at the Omnisports de Bercy , in Paris. An increasingly distant and melancholy image in the cultural environment. Curiously, his coach at the time, Xavi Pascual, had been one of those who had sounded the strongest as possible replacements for Jasikevicius in recent months.
Grimau now has some very intense weeks ahead of him. First, having just defined his work team, in which everything points to the presence of Víctor Sada, his assistant in the subsidiary and person of maximum confidence of the new coach. And then, by exhaustively following up on the creation of the squad he will have under his command, a task in which Juan Carlos Navarro, sporting director, has been immersed for months. Grimau has the advantage that almost all the youngsters who have debuted in recent seasons with the first team have been under his command. Apart from Nnaji, who has already played regularly this season, names such as those of the loaned Caicedo or Marcs are re-entering the Palau’s orbit with all the law.
