When the Sacramento Kings went up against the New York Knicks on Sunday night, Dave Joerger got a chance to see how much improvement there has been to the game of a player he once coached.

Mindaugas Kuzminskas may not recall vividly his participation in the 2010 Adidas Eurocamp in Italy, but the 42-year-old bench boss does. He talked about seeing huge potential in the Lithuanian international before and only had good words for his skill set.

“[I] love him. Love the energy that he brings to their second group. … He’s got great size. He really knows how to play. He does the stuff — not to say our American kids don’t know — (but) the European kids, they just cut really hard. They go for offensive rebounds and still get back in transition. If a guy is open, they don’t look at what the name is on the back of the jersey, he’s just open, he gets the ball. They play the way we all should, and a lot of our guys certainly do.”

Joerger also compared Kuzminskas' game to a former NBA veteran who played the same position as him.

“But he as an energy to him that’s a little (Andrei) Kirilenko-ish where he’s like a big cutter, offensive rebounder, runs the floor, those kinds of things. So at that point, that was seven (or) eight years ago when he was a younger player, but I didn’t know if his skill level would get to be good enough to play. And he has, he’s really worked on his game.”

That is indeed huge praise from the Kings' head coach as Kirilenko became one of the better international players during his time in the NBA. He was named an All-Star back in 2004 and is known to be a tough defender throughout his career.

If Kuzminskas can play close or even surpass what the 6-foot-9 Russian did during his 13-year NBA career, the Knicks would become nastier on the defensive end. With Carmelo Anthony as his teammate, he can learn from one of the game's best as he gets more accustomed to the brand of play in the NBA.