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What's Wrong with Jasi?

Geoff Lepper of the Contra Costa Times poked around and asked Nellie why Sarunas Jasikevicius wasn't getting much playing time. Al Harrington and Stephen Jackson have seemed to fit in just fine, but the third piece of the trade isn't doing so well.

This is not exactly how Jasikevicius envisioned things when he came over as part of the eight-player trade Jan. 17. Jasikevicius grew up playing up-tempo ball at all his Euroleague stops, so Warriors coach Don Nelson's style would seem to be a natural fit. Instead, he's played just 91 minutes in nine games with the Warriors, with DNPs against Philadelphia and Charlotte on this road trip.

"Right now, I just don't have a lot of faith in him," Nelson said. "I've given him a lot of opportunities to play, and he just hasn't looked good to me."

"You can run the numbers," Nelson said. "He's just not dominant. Just about every category at this point, I haven't been that happy with him."

Jasi has his own side of the story:

Jasikevicius sees the problem as being a Catch-22. Since the Warriors are barely practicing -- Tuesday's session was little more than a glorified walk-through -- he can't get up to speed, which leaves him unprepared to play well in the games and thus earn more playing time.

"It would be nice to get continuous minutes," Jasikevicius said. "Really, the opportunity never presented itself. I know what I need to do, it's just basically, what I need is a little bit of rhythm. We'll see, hopefully the situation improves."

Sarunas was supposed to be a nice backup point guard who could run the show while Baron took a breather just like Keith McLeod did. But he's really not fitting in right now. He had a very nice game against Minnesota but in the previous 9 games, he struggled mightily. Hopefully the Minnesota game gives him the confidence he needs to produce in spurts off the bench.

Other than Sarunas being too slow, what else have you noticed that has prevented him from being a useful contributor here? Also what do you expect from Sarunas the rest of the year?

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