The Denver Nuggets have hired Arturas Karnisovas, 42 years-old, away from the Houston Rockets, he will serve as the assistant general manager under Tim Connelly, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. With the Rockets, Karnisovas served – most recently – as the director of player personnel.
A snippet on Karnisovas from Woj:
After joining the Rockets as an international scout in 2008, Karnisovas had been promoted through the organization and most recently held the title of director of scouting.
As a player, Karnisovas had a decorated basketball career. After starring under P.J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall, Karnisovas won two Olympic bronze medals (1992 and '96) for Lithuania and was selected as FIBA's European Player of the Year in 1996. He reached the Euroleague Final Four three times.
A tremendous hoops career with Seton Hall, 1990-94) and in the Olympics. This looks like an excellent hire by the Nuggets as he has a wealth of hoops experience and has been in-and-around the game since playing as a professional overseas in 1987.
Most will assume that since he was with that Rockets that Arturas is a big analytic guy, but from his playing days it'd be interesting to get his take on how he evaluates talent.
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