Despite no EuroLeague title, Jasikevicius remains a Barca icon

After three years in charge at Palau Blaugrana, Sarunas Jasikevicius leaves FC Barcelona with his status as a club legend firmly intact.

The Lithuanian coach is bowing out on a high, having led his team to the Spanish League title in a 3-0 final series sweep of archrival and recent Turkish Airlines EuroLeague champion Real Madrid. That took Jasikevicius's total tally with Barca to an impressive four trophies in three seasons, including two domestic crowns.

There is, however, an obvious and significant 'but' to the story. While Saras enjoyed great success with Barca, he fell just short of achieving the main goal of restoring the team to the summit of continental basketball, as he did during his playing days with his and the club's first EuroLeague title in 2003.

Jasikevicius and his players did come close to that heady objective, however. Very close.

In his first season on the bench, Barca went all the way to the 2021 championship game. They topped the regular season standings, edged Zenit St Petersburg in the playoffs and then downing AX Armani Exchange Milan in a thrilling semifinal thanks to a dramatic game-winner from Cory Higgins.

But the title game went against Barca as Anadolu Efes Istanbul instead claimed the first of its back-to-back crowns with a tight 81-86 decision after Jasikevicius's men ran out of steam and scored just 1 field goal in the final 3 minutes.

The next two seasons saw Barca again confirm its position among the continent's heavyweights with first- and second-place regular season finishes, along with playoffs victories over FC Bayern Munich (in 2022) and Zalgiris Kaunas (2023), making it three Final Fours in as many seasons under Jasikevicius.

But the last two of those, including the latest in his hometown of Kaunas, only yielded more frustration for Jasikevicius in the form of consecutive semifinal losses to Real. This season's setback was particularly disappointing as Barca squandered a nine-point lead just before halftime by scoring only 24 points in the second half, ultimately fading away without much of a fight as its dreams of title glory once again disappeared.

This time, it felt like the end of a chapter not only for Jasikevicius and his expensively assembled team, which has proven to be the case, with the club's football-induced financial crisis already leading to the departure of star player Nikola Mirotic and other high earners likely to follow. The upheaval likely made it an opportune time for Jasikevicius to leave. He certainly won't be short of offers, both in Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic, but wherever he pivots, the already successful 47-year-old will surely take stock of what worked and what didn't in his time at Barca.

In particular, Saras's old-school, ultra-disciplinarian approach, including regular sideline screaming fits, may have worn down his players or caused them to feel extra pressure at key moments. Even the usually diplomatic Nick Calathes, who had played with Jasikevicius early in his career, expressed this sentiment when he left the club a year ago, commenting: "As a player, you want to have some freedom. I'm not 20 years old; I know how to play."

Still, the overall balance from Saras's time at Barca remains overwhelmingly positive. Despite falling short of the EuroLeague title, he certainly succeeded in making Barca competitive again among the continent's elite after the club had missed the Final Four for seven years in a row. The fans certainly appreciated that resurgence. Palau Blaugrana habitually reserved its loudest pregame noise for the 'Ja-Si-Ke-Vicius!' chant that always rang around the arena when he emerged from the locker room to take his place on the bench a few minutes before tipoff. In the end, there was never any sense that fans blamed the coach for the team's failure to take the final step in the quest for another EuroLeague crown.

Whether the standards set by Saras can be retained is a big question. His replacement, Roger Grimau, is unlikely to be backed with the same kind of tried and tested talent that Jasikevicius was able to call upon, and the new coach's experience with the club's youth ranks suggest that homegrown talent will become more prominent next season and beyond.

But for now, as Jasikevicius makes his third departure from Palau Blaugrana – twice as a player and now as a coach – the message from the fans to their idol is simple: moltes gràcies.