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Who is the "big man from Lithuania"?

In which we maybe get a scoop from a spam Twitter account

By Seth
Christian Petersen

Remember, in the days before Beno (BB), when the most interesting thing going on with the Knicks was that crusty Wednesday workout featuring Bobby Brown and company? At first, we knew only of Brown's participation and thought it was a three-man workout, then some names started coming in, and we ended with this:

I know the Knicks' roster is very nearly set, but while the Beno Udrih signing fills a backcourt hole, the Knicks could still probably use another big man, at least for a training camp invite. And shit, even if the Knicks were clearly done signing folks, I'd be super curious about that mysterious "big man from Lithuania". I can't just leave it at that.

So, I've been doing some snooping this morning. I don't have "sources", so I turned to the internet. Peering at my laptop screen through a magnifying glass, I Googled "big man from Lithuania", an obvious first move. That mostly turned up results about Donatas Motiejunas, who is under contract with the Rockets, and Zydrunas Savickas, who is a professional power lifter and qualifies as a "big man" only in the lateral sense. A 6'3", 410 lb. back-up center would be kinda intriguing, but I feel pretty confident that's not who the Knicks worked out Wednesday.

I did a bit more searching and found this: Back in 2010, the Knicks were reportedly interested in 6'9" Lithuanian small forward Mindaugas Kuzminskas. He's 23 now and seems like a solid player, but: 1. I don't think he qualifies as a "big man". 2. He just signed with Unicaja Malaga. 3. He's playing friendlies for the Lithuanian national team this week, so he probably didn't attend a workout in New York.

Google News and Google Regular served no further use, so I turned to Twitter. Twitter, weirdly enough, proved potentially helpful:

Now, let me tell you some things about that tweet:

1. It is spam. "ger casserly" is an account that follows nobody and just tweets random crap several times a day. It has a sort of @Horse_ebooks-y vibe in that it's clearly nonsense, but the text appears to be extracted from somewhere, albeit with really bizarre stylization mixed in.

2. "Fresh York Knicks"? "Orange County"?

3. Google searches of any of the phrases used in that tweet turn up nothing. I even tried translating some of it into Lithuanian (I didn't know what other language to pick) and Googling that, but had no luck. Similarly, searches including "Ovidijus Galdikas" and "Ovidijus Galdikas Knicks" were fruitless, except for this wonderful image. That said...

4. Ovidijus Galdikas is a real Lithuanian big man. He's 7'2" and 24 years old. He plays for BC Siauliai in Lithuania. He's not, as far as I can tell, on the national team, so he's not necessarily occupied at the moment. Here's a highlight tape. He's big!

I do not know who the Knicks' mysterious "big man from Lithuania" is, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's Ovidijus Galdikas, and I am making that guess based on a spam Twitter account that also called the Knicks the "Fresh York Knicks". AUGUST!

UPDATE: I found a press release! The Twitter spam account appears to have been correct. The "big man from Lithuania" is almost certainly Ovidijus Galdikas. And the Fresh York Knicks may really have watched him in Orange County. Thanks, ger casserly!

Update: Confirmed!

It's just a workout-- Galdikas is on level footing with, like, Sean May-- but perhaps something to keep an eye on.

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