Würzburg’s basketball talent Hannes Steinbach: In the footsteps of Nowitzki and Kleber

Dirk Nowitzki, 46, is not only the best German basketball player to date, he is also a long -time friend of the Steinbach family from Moos in Lower Franconia. Nowitzki and father Burkhard Steinbach, 51, know each other from the nineties when they both played for the second division club DJK Würzburg and celebrated the first Bundesliga promotion in the club’s history in the summer of 1998. The 20-year-old Dirk Nowitzki moved to the North American professional league NBA in the same summer, where he then, as is well known, played for 21 seasons for the Dallas Mavericks and won the NBA championship with them in 2011. Nowitzki stands as a bronze statue in front of the American Airlines Center, there is also a Nowitzki Way.

Burkhard Steinbach stayed in Würzburg, played 139 first division games there in eleven years and became a crowd favorite as a robust center – better known at the time as “colossus of moss”. Today the trained farmer operates a riding stable in Geroldshausen near Würzburg. In his free time, as an assistant coach, he helps with the young team of the Würzburg Bundesliga team, which plays in the third -class prob. And then he trained, among other things, an 18-year-old, 2.04 meter-tall center, who became European champion with the U-18 national team last summer and has been one of the greatest talents in his position in Europe at the latest: Hannes Steinbach, his son.

The son no longer lives in Moos, but in Würzburg in a flat share, and says that he has “never really talked to Dirk about basketball”. Also because he only sees the most famous basketball son of the city, if at all, only in summer when he stays in Würzburg on a visit to the home. “But Dirk also used many tips that come from my father in his career. The two had the same trainer back then. ” What is meant is Holger Schweindner, Nowitzki’s explorer and mentor, whose revolutionary idea was to give the ball into the hand not only small but also big players so that they learn to dribble and throw. If Hannes Steinbach in the full training and game calendar gives itself the opportunity for individual training, he mainly works on his litter. According to Steinbach, it has to become even more constant and safer, because: “Without litter, you can no longer survive in the NBA these days.”

According to Würzburg’s managing director Steffen Liebler, Steinbach’s strengths are “his extremely good timing at the rebound. And that he is always clear and tidy in the head “

In his first real professional season in Würzburg, Steinbach was actually primarily planned for the young team, and then planned as a supplementary and development player with the Würzburg professionals. From the beginning, Steinbach dominated in the ProB and put on an average of 24.7 points and 13.2 rebounds in eleven games. But when some Bundesliga players injured themselves in early 2025 and left more because of a continuing wave of illness, the young Steinbach was suddenly asked. Coach Sasa Filipovski gave him trust in the Bundesliga and the Champions League, and Steinbach paid back average of 11.2 points and 6.3 rebounds in a good 25 minutes per game. He has finally established himself in the professionaliness.

If you ask Steffen Lieblers, Managing Director at the Würzburg Baskets, to Steinbach’s value, he remembers a game situation in the final seconds of the Champions League home against Derthona Basket from Italy at the end of January: 70:75 against Würzburg, only 30 seconds on the clock, when Würzburg Lukas Wank tries a threesome out of the corner; Under the basket, Hannes Steinbach with his long arms prevails against three Italians and taps the ball into the basket. In the end, the Würzburgers win 80:79. In this situation, according to Liebler, the two greatest strengths of Steinbach showed themselves: “His extremely good timing at the rebound. And that he is always clear and tidy in the head. ” He saw both very rarely at this level with an 18-year-old.

In the meantime, Steinbach has given one or the other interview, and he was always addressed not only in the most famous, but also on the city’s second most famous basketball son. On Maximilian Kleber, 33, who once also started his career in Würzburg, in order to then strangely end up in the Mavericks after stations in Santiago de Compostela and Bayern Munich. There he was valued as a defensive specialist before moving to the Los Angeles Lakers in February after a good seven years in the trade with Luka Doncic. With glue, according to Steinbach, he once did an individual training in Würzburg. It was “very nice, very relaxed”, “but you have already seen how blatant the level at the NBA is how good these players are all.”

In Würzburg, nobody actually doubts that Steinbach as the third player in the city can make the leap into the NBA. Provided, of course, that he continues to work on himself, stay fit and has the necessary bit of career happiness on his side. The question that Steinbach is more likely to be is whether his future way there is more like that of glue or that of Nowitzki. So whether he will continue to develop in Würzburg under coach Filipovski, who enjoys the reputation of an excellent talent developer, or whether it will be moving to the USA in the coming summer. Maybe not immediately in the NBA, whereby Steinbach does not completely exclude this: “If the current season runs perfectly and I also develop physically, the NBA would of course be a good option. But only if I was relatively secure in the first round by a franchise that can also guarantee me a small role. ”

He could rather imagine a change to a US college: “The possibility really excites me.” Because he could not only study on the side, but could also get used to life in the United States. For later.