The regional basketball team Red Dragons Königs Wusterhausen faces a really difficult task on Saturday afternoon. At 3 p.m. the game kicks off with Rasta Vechta (22 points), who is third in the table. After the unnecessary home defeat against Bergedorf on the last day of the game, the Dahmelanders are definitely looking forward to making amends. It will be a very special match for two players, as Oliver Mackeldanz and Acha Njei were already under contract with the North Germans. Dragons coach Michael Opitz, who worked at Rasta as an assistant coach from May to June 2014, also has a short history in Vechta.
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“It’s always nice for me to come back there because I still have a lot of friends at SC. I even played with the current Rasta player Kevin Smit back then. Unfortunately, he missed the first leg because he had to pass out injured,” says Mackeldanz, who also knows very well how difficult the task is. “Although we were able to record a clear 84:57 win against the opponent in our own hall in the first meeting this season, repeating this will be anything but easy. You never know in advance which players from the Bundesliga squad will be there against us.”
The 2.12 meter tall Berliner started playing basketball as a teenager at SV Pfefferwerk. He then played for Central Hoops Berlin in the youth basketball league and for Future Basketball Berlin before the 31-year-old signed on for the Red Dragons for the first time in 2010. After a season in Dahmeland, he was hired by the third-class RSV Eintracht, where he was voted the best ProB league newcomer by the internet service eurobasket.com after the 2011/2012 series. After a season in Teltow, Mackeldanz signed a contract with the Cuxhaven BasCats (2nd Bundesliga ProA) before he was signed by Bundesliga promoted SC Rasta Vechta for the 2013/14 season.
“I was able to get a taste of Bundesliga air there for the first time,” he recalls. In July 2013, Mackeldanz sustained a fracture of his metatarsal. After his recovery, he played eight more games for Vechta, but could not prevent relegation. In 2016 he managed to return to the German elite league with the team. Nevertheless, the Berliner decided to switch to co-promoted Science City Jena. “I wanted to try something new,” explains the Dragons Center this step. With the Thuringians, he immediately developed into a top performer and crowd favorite, but was relegated to the ProA with the team in 2019. Despite this, he extended his contract for another year to return to the Dahmeland ahead of the 2020/2021 season. “I feel very comfortable here and I really enjoy passing on my experience to the young players in the team.”
This season, with the current eighth place in the table (14 points) after 15 games, things are going rather average for the Opitz squad. Some of the blame for this is certainly the corona virus, which has hit the Red Dragons a lot in the past few months. The center was also directly affected, because he fell ill with Corona in November and was absent from the team for a few weeks. “It was a difficult time for me because I couldn’t help.”
In any case, the freelance web designer and photographer really wants to stay true to basketball for a few more years. “I feel fit and healthy and am still having so much fun that I don’t know when I’ll stop.”
