Sarunas Jasikevicius had the pleasure of working with a series of great coaches during his long and successful playing career, but he says that the majority of them had little direct influence on the coach he has become today.
“For most of my playing career, I wasn’t really thinking about becoming a coach,” explains the FC Barcelona boss. “Playing and coaching are two very different things. As a player, of course, you try to win, but mainly you worry about yourself and what worked for you, what didn’t work. As a coach, you’re thinking about 12 times as many things, maybe even more because you’re thinking about every player, every situation. And there are always extra things – responsibilities with your staff, the medical staff, the media, with everything in the surroundings, so it’s a huge responsibility.
“Ultimately, I started to think that I could get into the coaching profession at the age of 34 or 35. So I have to say that the guys I was being coached by then, I really started paying attention to what they were doing and why they were doing it, the reasons for their reactions. It happened naturally, in the last two or three years of my playing career. I was starting to think about it – you could feel you’re not the same player anymore and cannot so the same things, so one thing led to another.
“Over the course of time, you start to go back a bit and try to remember situations that you’ve passed through, and even try to learn from things that I didn’t like in other coaches, things that I would not implement or repeat in those situations. It’s important to learn from everything. Nobody’s perfect and we don’t get it right 100% of the time, so try to learn from it. Experience always helps.”
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Happily, the two coaches with whom Saras finished his playing career, whose methods he started to follow closely as he considered following their footsteps into the world of coaching, proved to be outstanding teachers: Zeljko Obradovic at Panathinaikos (2011-12) and Xavi Pascual at Barcelona (2012-13).
Working with Obradovic, he saw the importance of setting exceptionally high standards for players without forgetting they are also human beings. “You have to demand maximum from your players every day, and this is not easy,” Saras explains. “At the same time, you have to have a balance of understanding them and what they’re going through in different situations throughout the year, and really support them at tough moments. They have to feel that you really support them and you have their back.
“It’s always a balance of how to take 100% from the players and how to demand it without any kind of excuses. But you have to understand that they are not robots. They have their lives and you have to find a balance.”
Although most of us only have the chance to see Obradovic in “game mode”, intense and focused on the sidelines, Jasikevicius reveals there is a very different side to him on a day-to-day basis: “Once in a while he would throw in a joke or have a private conversation. The personal side with players is very important, and it seems like it’s getting more important. That’s what we had with him.
“At the same time, he built a relationship to the point where it was very honest. He would not sugar-coat you; if you’re not doing your job, you will hear about it. And just being honest with a player, I think honesty sometimes is painful, but so be it. A player has to understand that you’re doing things for the best of him, for the best of the team. You’re trying to learn from situations and trying to react, but at the same time we’re in the business of producing results. And results don’t come easily, so you really have to be pushing yourself.”
When Saras left Panathinaikos to join Barcelona for the second time in 2012, he found a very different character in the form of Pascual, who now coaches Zenit St Petersburg. He is keen to hail the importance of Pascual in developing his own coaching methods even though they only spent one season together, saying: “Tactically, he’s really unbelievable, preparing every game. I learned from him that you can prepare a game in a very different ways to keep your opponents off balance.
“He’s one of the guys who, tactically, does the most things in Europe. And at this point, when I was already a player, I was trying to search for the reasons why the coach is doing one thing or another. And he was clearly proving that he was able to change things from one game to another in an extreme way. Tactical things, how to really involve every player, how to take one game as a whole different world and deal with it. And when it’s over, you forget about it and move onto the next one. I think he’s one of the best and I learned a lot from him.”
Jasikevicius acknowledges that he spends a reasonable amount of time in conversation with his fellow EuroLeague coaches – but also that there are limits. “With the close ones we talk a lot, we share stories and different situations and try to learn from them. You can ask another coach what they would do in a situation, but in general you have to figure out things on your own because what’s applicable for one team might not be for another.”
In addition to his peers, the Barca coach emphasizes the important role of his assistants in ensuring he gets the best out of himself and everyone around him. “You have to have a clear picture of what every assistant is giving to you, and what I like to do is have different types of people,” he explains. “But you also have to challenge them, ask them questions and have constant communication. Everybody has to be ready to give an opinion, but ultimately everything still falls on the head coach’s shoulders. Everybody is trying to help, and my job is to take as much information as possible from the assistants and hopefully make the right decision. Or at least make the decision you’re comfortable with, and then live with that decision.”
Referring back to his previous comments about the human side of players, Saras also recognizes the importance of looking after his own health by taking the time to switch off from the demanding coaching world, explaining: “You have to find a way to disconnect which is not easy during the year, especially because when the player has a day off, he spends it for himself. The coach still has to plan a lot of things, to plan the next practice, to plan the next trip, to plan the next game, and you get a head start by watching some video. So it’s a tough profession, there’s no question about it.
“Sometimes, I spend time with a leadership coach in Kaunas. We continue exchanging emails and phone messages. I always like information. Information is good, but when it’s too much information, I shut it down and try to stay away from it. But it’s important to assume that you don’t know everything and you never will, so whenever information comes, you take it and deal with it, whether you use it or put it to one side.”
From the evidence of his coaching career so far, he has learned how to use that information pretty well.
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