Jānis Strēlnieks

Jānis Strēlnieks
Jānis Strēlnieks (# 13) dribbles in the quarter-finals of the EuroBasket 2015
Player information
birthday	September 1, 1989
place of birth	Talsi , Soviet Union
size	191 cm
position	Shooting Guard / Point Guard
Club information
society	Olympiacos Piraeus
league	Basket League
Clubs as active
2007–2011 BK Ventspils 2011–2013 Spartak St. Petersburg 2013–2014 BK Budiwelnyk Kiev 2014–2017 Brose Bamberg 2017–2019 Olympiacos 2019– CSKA Moscow 0000
National team
Since 02010	Latvia

Jānis Strēlnieks (born September 1, 1989 in Talsi , Latvian SSR , Soviet Union ) is a Latvian basketball player . Strēlnieks played in his Latvian homeland until 2011, where he became the Latvian champion with BK Ventspils in 2009. He then played for three years in Russia and the Ukraine , where he became the Ukrainian champion in 2014 with the BK Budiwelnyk . From 2014 to 2017 he played for Brose Bamberg and became German champion three times. He then moved to the Greek first division club Olympiacos in 2017 . He has been under contract with CSKA Moscow since 2019 . With the Latvian men's national team , Strēlnieks took part in three European Championship finals up to and including 2015 .

Career

Strēlnieks belonged to the class that won the first male medal for the Latvian federation at a European Championship finals after the interwar period . At the U18 European Championship finals in 2007 in Spain, the Latvian youth team around Dairis Bertāns won a bronze medal two years after the female juniors. The Latvian selection won the first five games, then lost to the eventual finalists Greece and in the semifinals to title winners Serbia, but in the game for third place they were able to beat their Baltic rivals Lithuania by just two points. Strēlnieks scored the buzzer beater in the final second to win a medal, after the Latvians had been behind for almost the entire second half except for the final minute. At the U20 European Championship finals in front of their home crowd in Riga the following year, the Latvian juniors lost practically all medal chances after two defeats in the preliminary round and, despite two intermediate round victories, only achieved eleventh place, which one year later, as a former U18 medal winner, was tenth Place could hardly improve. Within his team, Strēlnieks had developed after winning the medal in 2007 from the sixth man alongside Bertāns to the player with the most minutes and points per game.

After winning a medal in 2007, Strēlnieks was also included in the first division team in Ventspils , the next largest city in the west of the Kurland region . The runner-up from 2007 had become Latvian champions seven times in a row between 2000 and 2006, but was initially ousted by the capital city clubs Barons Riga and VEF Riga . In the 2008/09 season Ventspils came back and together with Dairis Bertāns, who had come from financially struggling runner-up ASK, Strēlnieks won his first Latvian championship barely in seven games over defending champion Barons Riga. After BK Ventspils failed to defend their title in the following season and Barons Riga had regained the title, Strēlnieks again moved into the final series in 2011, which was lost to VEF Riga for Dairis Bertāns. In the Baltic Basketball League it was enough for Ventspils with Strēlnieks twice to move into the Final Four , in which they lost in both 2010 and 2011 in the semi-finals to the eventual title winner Žalgiris Kaunas . On the continental level, they had lost all six preliminary round matches in the 2009/10 Eurocup , including both against the eventual German champions Brose Baskets. In the preliminary round of the EuroChallenge 2010/11 , however, they won all preliminary round matches except for two narrow defeats against the Skyliners Frankfurt . Here they were only eliminated in the quarter-final play-offs against Telenet Oostende . In his first participation in the men's finals, Strēlnieks lost with the Latvian national team in the 2011 European Championship finals all five preliminary round games, including the last game against Germany with one point difference.

After the European Championship finals, Strēlnieks moved along the Baltic coast to Spartak in Saint Petersburg in Russia . His new Slovenian coach and former player world champion Jure Zdovc had already been said to be interested in bringing Strēlnieks to the Euroleague club KK Union Olimpija a year earlier , where Dairis' younger brother Dāvis Bertāns was already playing. The Russian cup winner was also promoted to the new supranational league of Eastern Europe for the 2011/12 VTB United League , in which, however, they failed in the play-offs in the quarter-finals and a year later in the second round. In the 2011/12 Eurocup , on the other hand, they made it to the semi-finals with just one defeat, after having defeated the German representative FC Bayern Munich twice in the preliminary round when they returned to international competitions. At the Final Four tournament, Spartak was defeated in the semifinals by the national competitor, host and eventual title winner BK Chimki by four points and then lost in the game for third place to the Lithuanian team Lietuvos rytas Vilnius . Strēlnieks, who came behind Yotam Halperin and the future NBA professional Patrick Beverley , was the top scorer in the quarter-final second leg against United League rivals ČEZ Nymburk , but could not take part in the final tournament due to injury. In the following Eurocup 2012/13 Spartak remained largely undefeated in the group stages against the European competition except for one defeat, only the national competition of Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar was defeated in the second group stage in both games. In the quarter-final second leg at BK Budiwelnyk Kiev , Spartak had to defend an eleven-point lead, but Strēlnieks himself remained pointless despite six assists and Spartak lost the last quarter by twelve points and the game by a total of 17 points after Malcolm Delaney for Budiwelnyk turned up in the final quarter. This heralded the end of coach Zdovc at Spartak; the club's funding was discontinued a year later and it was replaced by BK Zenit Saint Petersburg . Strēlnieks also left the club at the end of the season and moved to the Ukrainian champions BK Budiwelnyk in Kiev , where he replaced Malcolm Delaney, who had migrated to the German Bundesliga to Bayern Munich.

At the 2013 European Championship finals , the Latvian selection surprisingly prevailed in the “Baltic-Yugoslav Group B” with three wins in five preliminary round matches. At the start of the intermediate round, the Latvians then defeated the Ukrainian selection with some of Strēlnieks' new club mates clearly 85:51 with 34 points difference. A negative surprise was the defeat with four points difference in the last intermediate round match against already eliminated Belgians , with which the Latvians missed the quarter-finals, in which the previously clearly defeated Ukrainians moved instead. With BK Budiwelnyk, Strēlnieks also played in the ULEB Euroleague 2013/14 for the first time in the highest-ranking European club competition, which was also a first for the entire club, which was the bottom of the group with only two wins in ten preliminary rounds. As an innovation, the team was allowed to continue playing in the Eurocup 2013/14 , where they were eliminated in the quarter-finals against KK Roter Stern Belgrade . The second phase of the season after the turn of the year was overshadowed by the unrest in Ukraine , which led to the capital's club playing its international home games in Kaunas, Lithuania . After the violent, civil war-like escalation of the conflict in February 2014, many foreign players, especially those from the western world , left the Ukrainian clubs. At the end of the season, Budiwelnyk was able to defeat Chimik Yuschne, first in the main round, who had previously been unbeaten in the play-offs, in the championship final series and defend the title.

For the following season, Strēlnieks switched to the Brose Baskets from Bamberg , where his compatriot Uvis Helmanis , with whom Strēlnieks still played in his first professional season in Ventspils, had won championships. In the previous season, the team missed the championship title for the first time in five years and was reassembled by the new coach Andrea Trinchieri . In the Eurocup 2014/15 they lost twice in the intermediate round against the German champions Bayern Munich and also in the second round twice against the locomotive Kuban Krasnodar, who were previously undefeated in this competition and led by Malcolm Delaney. After losing the final in the Beko BBL-Pokal in 2015 against hosts EWE Baskets Oldenburg , Brose Baskets led the field of play-off participants as first in the championship final round of the 2014/15 basketball Bundesliga , where they made it to the final series without defeat finally won five games over the defending champion from Upper Bavaria and regained the championship title.

At the 2015 European Championship finals , the Latvian national team reached the quarter-finals, which were lost to defending champions and final hosts France . The Latvians then also lost the two placement games for the Olympic qualification, whereby Strēlnieks could no longer contribute a hit from behind the three-point line in his favorite discipline distance throwing, in which he had shown weaknesses throughout the tournament , and thus forfeited all options for a first time Participation in the Olympic basketball tournament since the premiere in 1936.

After Strēlnieks had extended his contract in Bamberg in June 2015 until the end of the following season 2015/16 , he reached the intermediate round of the 16 best teams in the EuroLeague 2015/16 with the Brose Baskets . After Bamberg had reached this competition round for the third time in its history, the first success at this level was finally achieved after 21 previously unsuccessful games with the home win over Žalgiris Kaunas , which was very convincing with 96:63 in the end result. In the BBL they reached the playoffs again as the main round first, in which Strēlnieks with Bamberg succeeded in sweeping through the entire playoffs for the second championship title in a row. Strēlnieks then extended his contract until 2019.

In the 2016/17 season , Strēlnieks played with Bamberg again in the EuroLeague, which was played in a new mode for the first time this season. After 30 exhausting home and return matches against the 15 opponents in the main round of the EuroLeague 2016/17 , Bamberg finished the season 13th and thus missed the playoffs. Bamberg get 10 victories. Of the 20 defeats, 12 were exceptionally narrowly lost with six or fewer points. In the BBL, Bamberg moved into the playoffs as runner-up in the main round and cup winner and was crowned German champion again with just one defeat.

In June 2017, Strēlnieks signed a two-year deal with the Greek EuroLeague finalist Olympiacos Piraeus .

Since July 8, 2019, he has been in the service of CSKA Moscow for two years .

Trivia

Strēlnieks is an excellent distance thrower with good success rates from behind the three-point line . Appropriately, his family name in the Latvian language denotes the shooter . His four year older brother Artūrs also plays basketball in the top Latvian league.

successes

• German champion : 2015, 2016, 2017
• German Cup Winner : 2017

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Janis Strelnieks - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga website
• Strēlnieks, JANIS - Player profile on the website of the Euro League ( English )
• Jānis Strēlnieks - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Daniel Aubrey: Photo Finish, Latvia Capture Bronze. FIBA Europa , August 12, 2007, accessed January 10, 2016 . 
2. ^ Dpa : European basketball championship: Germany trembles to win against Latvia. Spiegel Online , September 5, 2011, accessed January 10, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Lietuvos rytas vs. Spartak St. Petersburg - Preview: The Injuries. ULEB Eurocup , April 15, 2012, accessed on January 10, 2016 . 
4. ↑ BC Budivelnik Kiev vs. Spartak St. Petersburg - Report. ULEB Eurocup , March 13, 2013, accessed on January 10, 2016 . 
5. ↑ dpa =: Brose Baskets celebrate long-awaited victory in the top 16. Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 8, 2016, accessed on August 27, 2020 .