Zalgiris Kaunas president Paulius Jankunas spoke openly about the future of Sylvain Francisco, one of the hottest names on the European market. As reported in Spain, Jankunas said: \u201cI cannot give an exact date, but I think the first call came in mid-October. I would say clubs kept calling until New Year and the buyout offers kept increasing\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Lithuanian executive then explained how the club handled those approaches: \u201cThere were all kinds of attempts to convince us. Some arguments were even funny, others were serious conversations. But from the first call, our answer was clear: no, and absolutely not. This season we are not going to sell Sylvain through a contract buyout\u201d. Those words made Zalgiris\u2019s stance very clear as the club tried to keep its leader in place through the season.<\/p>\n
Jankunas also admitted that Francisco\u2019s main ambition lies beyond Europe: \u201cWe talk to him a lot. We know his plans very well, he really wants to try his luck in the NBA and see if he can play there. If you can say it like that, the ball is in his hands\u201d. He then closed with the club\u2019s position: \u201cWe are always ready to keep talking and we really want him to stay, because Sylvain is the leader of our team and a fundamental piece on which we build our system. Our desire is strong, but whether it becomes reality or not, I cannot say\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Zalgiris Kaunas president opened up on the market pressure around Sylvain Francisco and confirmed that the French guard\u2019s main goal is the NBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":483582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[271],"tags":[],"rumors":[407],"typology":[183],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-494157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lithuania","rumors-basket-rumors","typology-rumors"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/02\/Sylvain-Francisco-.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494157"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=494157"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=494157"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=494157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}