Artūras Gudaitis (born 19 June 1993) is a Lithuanian professional basketball player for Alvark Tokyo of the Japanese B.League. Standing at 2.08 m (6 ft 10 in), he plays at the center position. He was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers with the 47th overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft.
Early career
Before starting his professional career, Gudaitis played in the RKL with the LCC Klaipėda for one season. The next two seasons he played in NKL, and on his last season with Žalgiris-2 Kaunas he won a bronze medal. Gudaitis was respectively nominated as a most promising young player of the league on the same year.
On 6 August 2013, Gudaitis signed a professional contract with Žalgiris Kaunas for two years and was brought into the main Žalgiris roster. Whilst suffering from the knee injury in the first half of the season he had his breakthrough game against Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar in the EuroLeague tournament, scoring 14 points with 6 rebounds.[1] Gudaitis vastly improved during the regular season, and was called an x-factor of victorious LKL semi-final series against Lietuvos rytas Vilnius.[2]
On 9 November 2016, Gudaitis scored a career-high 17 points and got 11 rebounds in a 101–84 win over Montakit Fuenlabrada in EuroCup Basketball game.[5] One week later, on 16 November 2016, Gudaitis scored 12 points and got a career-high 15 rebounds.[6] After an individually successful 2016–17 season, he was named to the LKL All-Tournament Team on 13 June 2017.[7]
On 12 September 2017, Gudaitis signed with Olimpia Milano.[8] On 25 February 2018, Gudaitis extended his contract that would keep him with the team until the end of the 2020–21 season.[9]
On 1 February 2019, during an away game against Herbalife Gran Canaria, Gudaitis suffered an ACL injury that left him sidelined for the remainder of the 2018–2019 season.[10] Despite having played only 21 games in the Euroleague during the season, he was one of its most efficient players,[11] and was considered one of the league's top centers prior to the injury.
On 20 July 2022, Gudaitis signed a one-year deal with Greek powerhouse Panathinaikos, returning once more to the EuroLeague.[14] In 29 EuroLeague games, he averaged 7.5 points and 3.7 rebounds, playing around 17 minutes per contest. Additionally, in 33 domestic league matches, he averaged 7.9 points and 4.8 rebounds, playing around 16 minutes per contest. On 3 July 2023, Gudaitis was officially released from the Greek powerhouse.
On 21 July 2023, Gudaitis signed a one-year deal with Alvark Tokyo of the Japanese B.League.[15]
NBA
On 26 February 2015 Gudaitis announced that he was going to participate in the 2015 NBA draft[16] and prior to the NBA draft, it was reported that 11 teams were interested in his services.[17]
On 25 June 2015, Gudaitis was selected in the second round, with the 47th pick by the Philadelphia 76ers.[18]
Gudaitis represented Lithuania at the U–18 youth tournament in Poland, 2011. His team took 5th place in the tournament, where Gudaitis scored 11.3 points, grabbed 6.2 rebounds and had 1.4 blocks per game.[23]
In 2015 Gudaitis was included in the Lithuania men's national basketball team head coach Jonas Kazlauskas extended candidates list and was invited to the training camp.[24] He was released from the team on 1 September, just 4 days before the championship start.[25] He represented the primary Lithuania national team during the EuroBasket 2017 for the first time and averaged 4.8 points, 2.5 rebounds and 0.2 assists.[26]
