Rimas Kurtinaitis

Who is Rimas Kurtinaitis?

Rimas Kurtinaitis is a professional basketball coach, current head coach of the Khimki, retired Soviet and Lithuanian basketball player who was a member of the USSR and Lithuanian national basketball teams. He played as a shooting guard and is the only non-NBA player to participate in the NBA All-Star Three Point Contest in 1989. He is 196 cm tall. His former teams include Žalgiris Kaunas, CSKA Moscow, and Real Madrid. Kurtinaitis was also the first European player to play as an import in Australia's National Basketball League, playing for the Townsville Suns in 1993.

In 1997 he was named to the Lithuanian Ministry of Sport, and in 2003 he took the position of head coach of the Azerbaijan national basketball team.

He became BC Sakalai head coach during the mid-2000s. In December 2007 he became head coach of Polish men's Śląsk Wrocław basketball team. In 2008 he became head coach of BC Lietuvos Rytas with whom he won the 2009 Eurocup Basketball title in the Final-Eight tournament in Turin, Italy in a game against Khimky Moscow Region. In 2012 Kurtinaitis won Eurocup again, this time with BC Khimki. As of 2012, he is the only coach to win the Eurocup twice. In June 21, 2012, Rimas Kurtinaitis was named as the best Eurocup coach of all time.