Four defeats in five games since the beginning of the year: BG Göttingen dropped out of the playoff ranks of the basketball Bundesliga after the defeat in Weißenfels at the weekend. The mini-squad of the violets seems to have reached its breaking point. The calls for additional commitments are getting louder.
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Since the end of November, only four international players have belonged to the BG squad. The split between center James Dickey (to Israel) and guard Zack Bryant (to Finland) didn’t seem to matter at first. On the contrary: the violets appeared even more motivated and combative. In the meantime, however, signs of wear and tear can be seen. A tight program with many away games and correspondingly high loads and injuries show that this personal construct of the BG is a very fragile one.
The competition, on the other hand, has not remained idle. The Crailsheim team found what they were looking for in Bologna and signed Icelandic guard Jon Axel Gudmundsson until the end of the season, who had already appeared in Frankfurt under head coach Sebastian Gleim. Last weekend’s opponent, MBC, signed center John Bryant (from Gießen) and Reggie Upshaw (from the Ukrainian cup winners Budivelnyk Kiev) in January until the end of the season. These are just a few examples. Why is the BG having such a hard time with additional commitments?
BG Managing Director Frank Meinertshagen makes it clear: “The separation from the two players in November was only half voluntary on our part. Bryant really wanted to leave and Dickey was too high in the BBL.” The BG boss would have preferred to bring in new players in December, although he does not prioritize any position. “We need both: a guard to relieve Stephen Brown and Kamar Baldwin and a center to rebound better.” That was particularly noticeable in the defeat against MBC.
Syntainics MBC – BG Göttingen, BBL 2021/22
For BG Göttingen there was the fourth defeat in the fifth game of 2022 at Syntainics MBC in Weißenfels
© Andreas Bez
“We’ve come close a few times. But then there was a change of coach in one club and the new coach wanted to keep the player – but he hasn’t even played under the new coach yet,” says Meinertshagen. The search on the US player market is also difficult. “When there are corona cases in the clubs, the NBA only signs players for ten days.” These short-term contracts mean that the market for basketball players, who would also be interesting for Europe, has become much smaller and also very confusing .
In Meinertshagen’s eyes, finding a player like Rihards Lomazs is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Exactly a year ago, the Latvian switched from the French EuroLeague club Villeurbanne to the violets in the middle of the season. “We get a player like him once every hundred years. That was a real stroke of luck – but also because at that point we had a lot of money that we could invest. We don’t have this amount available now,” says the BG managing director.
Meinertshagen is – even after the lost games in January – satisfied with the first half of the season. “It’s too much black and white painting for me at the moment. Everything is either super great or super bad. Anything can still happen. We only played one game in the second half of the season.” He doesn’t see any danger that the team could get frustrated. “We just played badly against Braunschweig and MBC. The narrow defeat in Chemnitz was a result of the stressful phase with many away games and trips within a few days,” says the managing director, who in interviews during this season has never made a secret of the fact that he likes the team in the playoffs and in the coming ones Season would also see in an international competition.
