Lithuanian pro basketball team president blames team's struggles

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Gedvydas Vainauskas, president of Lithuanian professional basketball team BC Lietuvos Rytas (top 2 major basketball team here), has sparked controversy after attributing his team's struggles to having too many black players

>"We've always held a stance that there shouldn't be more than two black players on the team," Vainauskas said. "What happened was that coach Tomas Pačesas likes to play with black players -- to control them, to teach them, to tutor them -- and we ended up with four players that are black. All of a sudden, they came together to form ... how should I put it ... a sort of a gang. It cannot be that way; no more than two black players -- I can say that from my 23 years of experience in the business. Teams, don't ever have more than two black players ... (smiles) Because that's when bad things start to take place."

Vainauskas issued a statement regarding the incident, and it is published on the team's website:

>"While talking about the lessons learned during the last season, I had in my mind the situation with foreign players. The principal position of BC Lietuvos Rytas is that a basketball player first of all is a professional. Unfortunately, a few of our foreigners did not meet expectations of the club. During the play-offs they acted irresponsibly and that had a great negative impact on our team's performance. In my interview, I expressed my disappointment about some of the foreign players selected for the season. I apologize, if I was improperly understood."

https://web.archive.org/web/20170616171112/http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lithuanian-pro-basketball-team-president-blames-teams-struggles-on-black-players/