Zalgiris Kaunas

Šarūnas Jasikevičius came back to Kaunas not as a player but as a coach, and in 2018 he took Žalgiris to a EuroLeague Final Four. That earlier run belongs to a different squad: in 1998–99, under Arvydas Kazlauskas, Žalgiris beat Kinder Bologna 82–74 in the final, with Tyus Edney named MVP. The season after, the team that had just made history collapsed, and it took years, and eventually the return of Arvydas Sabonis for the 2003–04 campaign, to give the club back its bearings. Sabonis remains the name people reach for first when they talk about Žalgiris.

The club took its name from the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, and green forest is what the word means, which is also where the green in the club's colours comes from. Founded in 1944, Žalgiris built its identity through the mid-1980s, when it won the Soviet league five times in six years. Domestically nothing since has come close to challenging it: 26 Lithuanian league titles make it the most decorated club in the competition's history, and the King Mindaugas Cup has been added nine times since 2017.

None of that carries the weight of the Vilnius–Kaunas derby. Žalgiris against BC Rytas is still called the Big Game in Lithuania.