It's hard to imagine any city loving basketball more than Kaunas. The city of roughly 300,000 has five basketball academies, which is two and half times as many soccer academies as there are in Kaunas. The largest and most well-known of them is Zalgaris Basketball Academy.
Originally known as Sabonis Basketball Academy, it merged with the Kaunas Basketball School several years ago and now has more than 1,000 players aged 7 through 18. Among the many stars to have gone through the ranks at the academy to become future stars is Paulius Jankunas, who after retiring from a glorious playing career now serves as Zalgiris's assistant general manager.