Hapoel Jerusalem hosts Hapoel Holon Sunday night (21:00) as the Reds will have a new coach on the sidelines in Yotam Halperin for at least the interim after having parted ways with Oren Amiel this past Thursday night.

Jerusalem’s results along with the atmosphere surrounding the team has been quite the rocky road since the start of the season and despite having a 2-1 record in Israel Winner League play, the club is 0-3 in Europe and last gameday were blown out at Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Although Halperin has no experience as a bench boss, he will have Lithuanian Donaldas Kairys who joined Amiel’s staff at the start of the campaign with him on the sidelines who has had the opportunity to work with some of the best coaches in the business as well as having been a head coach himself.

The Sports Rabbi spoke to Kairys a couple of weeks ago about his arrival in Israel, his time having been in charge of the Under-20 Lithuanian team that played in Tel Aviv during the 2019 European championships well as why he decided to take the assistant position with Jerusalem after having been in charge of Rytas Vilnius last season.

“I came here because people love basketball just as they do in Lithuania. It’s a great opportunity for me as a coach. The staff here is a great and I feel very welcome here in Israel. It’s a great organization and a good country with an excellent fan base with an opportunity for me to improve as a coach.”

Kairys began his coaching career with Khimki Moscow back in 2005 and worked as an assistant coach with a number of teams including CSKA Moscow in 2007/08 when the Russian team won the Euroleague title over Maccabi Tel Aviv.

“I have taken something from every head coach that I have worked for and I have worked with some very good ones like Ettore Messina while being a head coach allowed me to lead my own teams. I’ll be working on helping us improve.”

Being a part of the National Team program in any country is a privilege and Kairys was an assistant with Lithuania’s senior team between 2006-2010 where he earned bronze medals at both the 2007 Eurobasket in Spain along with the 2010 World Cup in Turkey. In 2019 he took over the Under-20 team that took part in the 2019 European Championship being held in Tel Aviv which was won by the host, Israel.

“It was fantastic to work with the Under-20 here in Israel. We had an interesting team and we worked hard and finished first in our group. Unfortunately we had to meet Israel in the quarterfinals and they were very well coached and well prepared by Ariel Beit Halachmi. The intensity and the crowd just overwhelmed some of us and we couldn’t make it to the Final Four.”

Lithuanian basketball just like any other country has had ups and downs but one thing that is certain is that hoops is number one Kairys explained, “Basketball is always changing and the same is true in Lithuania. Some years we can be better and some a little bit worse. It will always be good because basketball means too much in Lithuania and it’s number one in so many categories by far and it will continue to be good.”

As for Jerusalem’s potential this season, Kairys believes that the club has the quality to be able to compete in every competition that they are participating in, “We want to play the best basketball and reach our potential. We have good potential and putting ourselves in the position to win every game and we want to give ourselves the chance to play in the final of every competition.”