Vilnius is a city of champions once again: Rytas beats Žalgiris in a spectacular series

The 2023-2024 Betsafe-LKL season in the books. LKL.lt together with Scorestars presents you how it went down in the 1st and 3rd place series.

Rytas Vilnius has been crowned the Lithuanian champion once again. Rytas started the series by erasing double-digits deficit in the first game and winning it in the OT to steal the homecourt advantage. Another OT battle took place in Vilnius and Rytas was victorious once again. Žalgiris Kaunas managed to get their first win of the finals at home but another epic showdown in the capital saw Rytas winning the game with Marcus Foster hitting the two-pointer to give his team 1-point lead with 8 seconds remaining. Lukas Lekavičius had an open look from behind the three-point line but it fell short and Rytas began celebrating.

Marcus Foster became the MVP of the finals. The American guard was unstoppable in the decisive game 4 (33 pts, 6/7 threes, 31 eff). His averages throughout the series were also impressive, despite not showing his best abilities in the first two games of the series - 20,5 pts (50% threes), 3,5 ast, 15,5 eff.

Rytas has defeated Žalgiris in the Betsafe-LKL finals for the first time after 2009-2010 season when Rytas, coached by Rimas Kurtinaitis won the best-of-seven in the most dramatic fashion (4-3). It is also the second title for Rytas in the last three seasons, both won with Giedrius Žibėnas at the helm of the team.

In the bronze medal series, 7bet-Lietkabelis proved to be the better team than Wolves Twinsbet Vilnius. Nenad Čanak's team managed to win the first game in Vilnius to take the homecourt advantage. Wolves Twinsbet evened out the series in Panevėžys but 7bet-Lietkabelis finished with two convincing victories to capture the bronze medal for the second year in a row. Wolves Twinsbet is yet to win it's first podium appearance after two seasons.

All the results of finals:

Wolves Twinsbet Vilnius 84-86 7bet-Lietkabelis Panevėžys

Žalgiris Kaunas 88-89 Rytas Vilnius

7bet-Lietkabelis Panevėžys 73-81 Wolves Twinsbet Vilnius

Rytas Vilnius 104-94 Žalgiris Kaunas

Wolves Twinsbet Vilnius 84-91 7bet-Lietkabelis Panevėžys

Žalgiris Kaunas 91-81 Rytas Vilnius

7bet-Lietkabelis Panevėžys 98-87 Wolves Twinsbet

Rytas Vilnius 88-87 Žalgiris Kaunas

Scorestars Dream Team:

This time the last Weekly Dream Team Lineup of the season includes Marcus Foster (15,5 eff) and Lukas Lekavičius (17 eff) at guard, Deividas Sirvydis (21,3 eff) and Tre‘Shawn Thurman (16,8 eff) at forward and Laurynas Birutis (23,8 eff) at center.