By Lefteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net
On Wednesday Alba Berlin (photo) pushed Anadolu Efes till the last minute on the verge of the defeat, but finally the Turkish team survived. Two hours later and a lot of kilometers away Bamberg lost easily to CSKA. After those results the total record of German teams in Top 16’s history is just 1-30! And their only win was inevitable, since 45 days ago Alba faced Brose Baskets and the winner of the game in any case would came from Germany!
Both teams qualified in the Top16 this season for the second time in their history (Alba made it four years ago and Bamberg in the 2005-06 season) and both of them finished without win in the past. That translate to 30 losses in 30 games, when they face non-German teams. And this is weird. German teams have bigger budgets in comparison with other conteders, they are part of healthy and competitive domestic league and have bought recently a lot of quality foreign players.
They don’t have a great tradition, but who can forget the glory days of the nineties? The German national team won the Eurobasket in 1993 and two years later Alba having a core from that national team in its roster (Henrik Rödl, Gunther Behnke, Stephan Baeck, Teoman Öztürk) won the Korac cup against Milan, one of the powerhouses of that era (with players like Bodiroga, Gentile, Fucka, Sconochini etc). The overall level of Korac cup wasn’t the highest, but Alba continued to have great results in the Euroleague. The permanent German champions reached the quarterfinals in the 1997-98 season of European champions cup (AEK Athens qualified to the Final Four of Barcelona with 2-0 wins) and in the 2000-01 season in FIBA’s Suproleague (Panathinaikos prevailed with 2-0 wins).
You can assume a lot of things, considering Brose Baskets lost a lot of games in the details. However, the main problem for the German teams seems to be their lack of experience in order to win big games in Euroleague and their unsuccessful effort to maintain a solid quality core of German players. Alba and Bamberg can make the further step, but keep also an eye on the rise of Bayern Munich under coach Svetislav Pesic, who in the nineties guided Alba and the German national team in a European.