Carsen Edwards was already hanging on the basket before tipoff and pulled it down several times, almost looking as if he was trying to get the hoop ready for the first half. It wasn’t even half a minute into the game when the lively Texan with the number three on his back had already sunk his first three-pointer. At the end of the game, Edwards had 24 points and a hit rate of almost 70 percent. There is often talk at the moment that Bayern’s basketball players are still undefeated in their new home, the SAP Garden, and that is why they are doing so well in the Euroleague. But they are still unbeaten in their old home, the BMW Park.
On Sunday afternoon, the Baskets from Bonn wanted to change this in the sold-out hall. For Bayern, in addition to the respectable home record, it was also about being the front runners and keeping a competitor at a distance. Both were done pretty clearly with a final score of 93:73. Towards the end, the 40 or so fans from North Rhine-Westphalia who had traveled with them sang self-deprecatingly: “Take off Bayern’s Lederhosen.” And the Bayern fans? Sang along in a good mood.
Ultimately, Edwards is just a building block, albeit a pretty solid one, in a team that is currently wearing down every opponent with its variability in offense. Similar to the guests from Alba Berlin last Thursday in the Euroleague (115:88), Bonn was able to keep up for a good quarter, but in the second half of the game Bayern’s hit rate increased, the defense acted more attentively, which is why Bonn missed throws and lost the ball more often. At halftime it was already 50:37, and at one point Bayern were 26 points ahead.
It became clear what self-image the team under Gordon Herbert had already developed after two months. And that on a day when the coach himself wasn’t there at all: Herbert was already badly injured on Tuesday against Alba and was replaced on the sidelines by assistant coach TJ Parker. “He’s feeling pretty bad, so I filled in for him today,” Parker said after the game. But he is confident that Herbert will be fit again for the next game. When asked about the superiority, he said: “We are playing with a lot of self-confidence at the moment.”
NBA-experienced winger Onuralp Bitim is expected to make his debut on Friday against Barcelona
National player Andreas Obst, second best thrower of the day behind Edwards, also thought so: “The attitude was right, the ball went very well, it was fun.” Not all good news for the Bundesliga competition.
Herbert’s absence in particular made it clear that the coaching team behind him is also an important building block. One person who doesn’t initially stand out as much as the newly signed players is TJ Parker. The brother of former NBA champion Tony Parker has also had years of practice as a head coach, although he had to leave Villeurbanne a year ago due to lack of success.
The Munich basketball players are currently leaving as little as possible to chance. The signing of the NBA-experienced winger Onuralp Bitim also fits in with this, after Niels Giffey and captain Vladimir Lucic have been out injured for a long time. Bitim hasn’t played yet this time, but Parker indicated that he still has to go through a few medical checks and that he expects to play next Friday.
This task is likely to be a little trickier: FC Barcelona is coming to the SAP Garden at the start of the weekend and immediately before an international break. Obst thinks that FC Bayern is now perceived a little differently in Europe: “It’s perhaps no longer the case that they come here and say: Bayern, that’s a must-win.” They’re more of a team now , where others think: “Oh, we have to beat them first.”
In order to maintain this status, you have to “rotate a lot, especially in the Bundesliga,” says Obst, because: “The Euroleague schedule demands a lot. Mentally, but also physically.” Obst was also called up for the national team’s upcoming games. But the world champion explains that he will only step in after consultation if there is a staff shortage – after the Barcelona game he is currently planning to clear his head for “a day or two”.
