Welcome to New Mexico: Donatas Motiejunas demoted by Houston Rockets

November 13, 2012

Quite a poor turn of events in one of BallinEurope’s Eurocentric NBA storylines to follow in 2012-13 this morning as the Houston Rockets announced the demotion of Lithuania’s Donatas Motiejunas to the NBDL’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

Through the NBA’s first week and a half, Motiejunas found himself well on the far side of the bench with backcourt players Marcus Morris and Cole Aldrich seeing more minutes behind Omer Asik. Motiejunas saw just five minutes in one game, going for three points and two personal fouls.

In keeping with today’s theme of #OccupyFIBA, Talk Basket notes that Motiejunas had ironically “declined an invitation from the Lithuanian National Team last summer, in order to put extra work with the Rockets.” Pessimists would say that this is the wave of the future – we’ll now have to wait and see just how badly Doncė lost on that particular gamble…

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This post was published on November 13, 2012
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Comments: 13
  1. Todd
    12 years ago

    Motiejunas is a “backcourt player” with Morris and Aldrich?

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  2. Russ
    12 years ago

    The guy might have made some wrong decisions outside basketball court and maybe was too cocky, but still he was solid in preseason games with 9,8 ppg & 4,3 rpg. To me this is just another proof of how dumb and ignorant most NBA coaches are.

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  3. Whatever-o-mon
    12 years ago

    McHale is no more than an assistant coach. C’mon, he was clearly one of the leaders in the pre-season games, but suddenly he was moved to the back of the bench. For what? Just… I have no words to describe how dumb McHale is, given the situation.

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  4. Locke
    12 years ago

    Typical American NBA coaches. Almost always trying to ruin the careers of the European players…………….

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    • Gabe
      12 years ago

      Yes whenever a European player fails in the NBA it is because of the coaches hate Europeans and want them to fail and when an American player fails it is because he just doesn’t have the talent. Don’t believe me? Well just ask Tony Parker, the Gasol brothers, Nowitkzi, Bargnani, Deng, Turkoglu, Rubio, etc, etc…

      I mean if the coaches didn’t purposely try to ruin the careers of all European players most of the NBA would be European. I mean Americans can’t play. Look how bad they do when they go against Europeans and the rest of the world in international competitions. When was the last time the USA won one of those? Right?

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      • Mike
        12 years ago

        Most NBA coaches are very biased against European players. Anyone that knows a thing about NBA history knows that.

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  5. Phileus
    12 years ago

    I was looking forward to seeing D-Mo play in Houston, but people (even BiE writers apparently) are mistaken in thinking that D-League is a bad thing. Especially with the Texan teams, coaches at the D-League level play the same system as the pro team, and so playing for the D-League is a way of learning through experience that they don’t get riding the pine 🙂 D-Mo is not better than Pat Patterson, and Morris has playing pretty well too, so this shouldn’t be too surprising – even if it is disappointing.

    On the other hand, Houston’s other Euro, Omer Asik, is playing great this year, better than the guy he used to back-up in Chicago! Asik’s game against the Hawks produced my favorite statline of the season so far: http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400277738

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  6. Russ
    12 years ago

    OK, how many teams have won NBA title in a 21st century ? And the answer is: 6. How many more were at least in the finals ? And the answer is 5. That makes 11 teams out of 30. My theory is that max 30 percent of NBA teams know what they are doing and the rest of them just exist, having no clue whatsoever. How nuts you have to be to stack up 7 PF’s that are rookies or sophomores on your roster ? This alone proves that there’s smth wrong with this rockets organization.

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    • Mike
      12 years ago

      The Rockets manager, Daryl Morey, is obviously incompetent.

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      • Phileus
        12 years ago

        This is a really interesting quesiton I have done some research on. Why are NBA team owners, who are essentially running corporations with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, always so ready to trust management of their assets to people with no expertise (e.g. Isaiah Thomas a GM and coach)?

        I agree that the vast majority of teams are incompetently managed, and it’s striking to me that savvy businessmen who were smart enough to build their fortunes can tolerate this.

        Morey is an interesting case. He has a good eye for dumping talent at its maximum value and acquiring talent at a minimum value. Asik was probably overpaid, but he’s also performing far better than anyone would have expected. He acquired Harden at an unbelievable bargain, basically after acquire K-Mart at a similar bargain. That being said, all his years of being clever have never led the Rockets to any success. He’s a good management tactician, but his strategy has never been good enough to get anywhere in the end.

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  7. Gabe
    12 years ago

    http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/11/13/belgian-basketball-player-misses-4-shots-at-his-own-basket-video/

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  8. cmac
    12 years ago

    This is just how the rockets treat their rookies. He’ll be back in the NBA before the end of the season.

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  9. Russ
    12 years ago

    Rockets bring Donatas Motiejunas back from D-League after only two games there. D-Mo proved that the NBA is where he belongs as he averaged 24 points, 9.5 rebounds and 3 assists.

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