No, Alba Berlin is not bottom of the table, neither in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) nor in the Euroleague. But it does seem a little scary when you suddenly find Germany’s top team in third-to-last position in both competitions. What is particularly unusual is the state of play in the domestic league, because in Europe people have already come to terms with the fact that the others have a lot more money and therefore better players. As is well known, the “Alba Way” propagated by the club itself envisages sticking to the idea of developing talent and promoting young talent in the capital – and, if in doubt, sometimes lagging behind in Europe. It’s been like this for years.
In the competition between the most muscular and richest from Athens, Istanbul and Barcelona, Alba is usually not competitive, but nationally it should be enough for opponents like the Chemnitz 99ers, the Telekom Baskets Bonn or the Hamburg Towers, at least that is the claim on the Spree. The problem: It’s currently not enough against these teams either. After four league matchdays, what many experts and even coach Israel Gonzalez had feared before the start of the season has now happened to Alba. After three defeats at the start, there is a lot of rubble lying around on the otherwise clearly asphalted Berlin path. “We’re off to a rocky start now,” admitted someone who knows the context well at the weekend: Tim Schneider, a native of Berlin and, in his role as a local, an important member of the team.
SZ Plus Marco Baldi im Interview
:“Last in the Euroleague – we didn’t like that at all”
At the start of the basketball season, Alba managing director Marco Baldi explains why Bayern Munich won’t naturally become champions – and how big the gap between Berlin and Europe’s top is.
After the 78:81 home defeat against Chemnitz, he found drastic words: “We can’t shit on each other, we have to continue to stick together.” After the worst start to the season in over 20 years, that’s the challenge for the Albatrosses: How do you stay cool , if things don’t go well – and if there are injury concerns in addition to a squad that isn’t quite harmoniously put together anyway?
Currently, four professionals who are urgently needed are missing: playmakers Malte Delow and Ziga Samar as well as youngster Elias Rapieque and the American Matt Thomas. As Germans, Delow and Rapieque would be particularly important in the BBL because, according to the regulations, there must be at least six local players in the squad for league games. To ensure this, the club recently even had to call 18-year-old Anton Nufer into auxiliary duties.
Alba Berlin is trying to get young talent – it already worked for Franz Wagner back then
That’s how they’ve always done it at Alba, and today’s NBA millionaire Franz Wagner, for example, once made his debut in the professional team at the age of 16. But now there is also a certain lack of results. Before the start of the season, manager Marco Baldi had warned about the situation that had now occurred in an interview with SZ, saying that the majority of the team had to “stay healthy, that is an important factor over which we have relatively little influence”. Money is tight in Berlin, which is why the team could only be strengthened rudimentarily in the summer. And perhaps there was a bit of a lack of ideas to identify people with potential in a difficult market. Leading personnel such as world champion Johannes Thiemann (to Japan) and Sterling Brown (Belgrade) had to be let go; there were only two newcomers, the former Ulm native Trevion Williams and the Australian Will McDowell-White – so far only the former has been helpful.
Nevertheless, Baldi saw no “reason to worry” after the Chemnitz bankruptcy, but he admitted: “We have problems. We are missing important players. And we always say, we need everyone to get through the season well.” The decimated squad is currently reaching its limits, even in a duel with opponents that they could actually beat. Five games within ten days, even the better-managed Bayern are having a hard time, and they also surprisingly lost to the Central German BC at the weekend.
“If the rotation is shorter, this is of course noticeable,” observed Baldi. Every step on the parquet is heavier and your joints groan. “The double weeks” of everyday league life and two appearances in the Euroleague during the week “demand everything. And if you then have a five-minute phase in which you are not fully present, that is enough for you to lose, says Baldi. He knows the problem. But he obviously doesn’t have a solution at the moment.
