Basketball playoffs: Alba Berlin forces FC Bayern into the playoff

EIt had looked like anything was possible midway through the third quarter, but certainly not like this result. Isiaha Mike had just sunk a cracking dunk for FC Bayern into Alba Berlin’s basket; the defending champions from Munich were leading 52:42 in this fourth of a maximum of five final games for the German basketball championship. Nothing worked for the Berliners anymore, passes flew across half the field out of bounds or hit teammates unprepared in the shoulder, as if the albatrosses had suddenly been deprived of all their senses in the subtropical heat of the Max Schmeling Hall. “We were dead,” said Alba forward Malte Delow after the game; Munich’s eighth championship title seemed only 15 minutes away.

As if someone had rammed an iron rod with full force into the Bayern gearbox

The rest of the encounter is quickly told: From this moment on until the end of the game, Bayern scored exactly nine points, while Berlin scored 29. The final score was 71:61 for Berlin. It was as if someone had suddenly rammed an iron rod with full force into the Bavarian gearbox, which had previously been running smoothly, while at the same time the Berliners were experiencing a resurrection that had almost biblical characteristics. At least that was the reaction of the fans, who completely out of their minds turned the sold-out hall into a madhouse. Contrary to expectations, the question of who will be German champion in 2025/26 was not decided on Friday evening in the federal capital, but was postponed to game five on Sunday in Munich.

Not even the oldest and wisest of all basketball teachers in Germany could say how this miracle from Prenzlauer Berg could come about. “It very rarely happens that we lose our rhythm. Unfortunately it happened today,” said Bayern coach Svetislav Pesic, who will now experience the last game of his magnificent coaching career spanning four decades at home at SAP Garden. Of course it was always planned that way, the 76-year-old joked a little tiredly afterwards.

But what actually happened after Mike’s dunk a good 15 minutes before the end, which immediately caused Alba coach Pedro Calles to take a time out? To put it simply, the Berliners remembered what constitutes success in basketball: defend aggressively and hope that the balls end up in the basket at some point instead of on the ring or on the board or with the opponent. That’s exactly what succeeded: “We were in the hole and worked our way out again,” as Calles subsequently stated.

It wasn’t so much the artists like Jack Kayil and Martin Hermannsson who led the mission of resurrection, but rather the workers in the team, especially Justin Bean and Malte Delow. In the end, 17 points and nine rebounds were on one player’s record, eleven and eight on the other’s.

Andreas Obst looks like Oliver Kahn after the game

But what did Bayern do? Pesic later said they should have done the same as the Berliners: defended hard, fought intensively. Instead, they started maneuvering. “We look to the referee, we look for someone to help us. But there is no one to help if you don’t want to help yourself.” The result was a 26-2 run by the Berliners, which doesn’t happen often in a Bundesliga season, and which Germany’s best team watched as if frozen. Now it was Bayern who threw the balls next to the basket instead of into the basket, and in the final quarter Pesic’s men needed an incredible five minutes to even score a point.

National player Andreas Obst, officially the most valuable player of the regular Bundesliga season, was now defended as hard as he had taken on the largely ineffective Berlin conductor Hermannsson in the first quarter. Shortly before the end, after a modest nine points and three ball losses, he stalked to the substitution bench with an angry expression on his face, and when a television reporter asked him a little later if he wanted to say something about this crazy game, Obst made a face like a real Oliver Kahn doppelganger who was about to eat his counterpart alive.

Bayern coach Pesic now faces the last major final of his career

What has to give Bayern pause for thought is that even at the height of Berlin’s weak phase, they were not able to win the game. Instead of taking advantage of the situation, the Munich team often acted without concentration, rushed to finish or got stuck in defense of the bitterly fighting Berliners.

Who will be able to receive the silver-plated brass championship trophy in Munich on Sunday will depend not least on who copes better mentally and physically with the sauna session in the Max Schmeling Hall. Pesic, the old coaching fox, at least encouraged the Munich fans that he is ready for the last big final of his career. “I now know what we have to do better,” he said after the game in Berlin. “It would have been better if I had known during the game, but now I know.”