German basketball players in the NBA: What can we expect from Steinbach, Anderson and Kayil? – Sports

It’s been a few years since he visited, but some memories never fade. When Hannes Steinbach was a little boy, as he recently told the SZ, there was a basketball hoop hanging behind his parents’ house in Würzburg. One of the kind that are installed thousands of times in German front gardens, only rarely at the correct height of 3.05 meters. But back then it wasn’t about a few centimeters; the Steinbach family’s guest was long enough to reach the ring. 2.13 meters to be exact. His name: Dirk Nowitzki. His status back then: one of the best basketball players in the world – and at the same time a friend of the Steinbach family.

“We threw balls at the basket in the backyard a few times,” says Hannes Steinbach, 20, looking back on his famous training partner. “As a child, I didn’t really understand the idea of ​​having the best German basketball player in the yard.” As a boy, you’re not picky about who drops by as a playmate; sometimes one of your father’s strangely tall acquaintances does. Nowitzki played with Burkhard Steinbach in his only Bundesliga season at DJK Würzburg in 1998/99 before moving to the US professional league NBA for his international career. The glittering company that Hannes Steinbach is now drawn to, the boy from back then, who now measures 2.09 meters himself – and who wants to “make his dream come true” with the Charlotte Hornets in the future, as he says.

In the draft, the NBA’s annual talent draw, the Hornets selected the center 14th – after a year at the University of Washington, he should get his minutes straight away when the league starts the new season in the fall. The same goes for Christian Anderson, 20, another German who Charlotte picked up at No. 18 from college in Texas. And in Jack Kayil, 20, a third young German basketball player ended up in the NBA. He has had an even more glamorous, but probably also more difficult time: as a rookie with the champions, the New York Knicks, where he will fight for playing time alongside Ariel Hukporti from Stralsund.

At the draft, Steinbach described it as “very, very cool” that he and Anderson “were drafted by the same team after we played together on all the youth teams.” Quite successfully, by the way, last year they won World Cup silver together with the German U20 – only defeated by the Americans in the final. It seems to be almost in vogue in US basketball to rely on Germans, preferably in a package on the same team.

Soon nine Germans will be playing in the best basketball league in the world

In addition to those mentioned, established professionals such as the Wagner brothers Moritz and Franz, Tristan da Silva (all Orlando Magic), Maxi Kleber (LA Lakers), Dennis Schröder (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Isaiah Hartenstein (Oklahoma City Thunder) earn millions in salaries in the NBA. An expression of the fact that the managers of the US clubs have noticed the talent that is emerging in the world and European champion country. Kayil, for example, comes from the youth department of Alba Berlin (where he just became German champion with the professionals). Steinbach enjoyed a far-sighted education at the Würzburg Baskets, which – which makes his career special – also included special tricks from the Nowitzki camp.

As a teenager, Steinbach attended several camps run by Nowitzki’s mentor Holger Geschwindner in the tranquil Würzburg basketball cosmos. Far from the public eye, the now 80-year-old invited young basketball players with ambition to further training in a hall on Lake Starnberg. In addition to training to the sounds of the saxophone (“Basketball is jazz”), there was a lot of unorthodox training content, as Steinbach remembers: “The rowing was particularly strenuous. But overall it helped me a lot because it was a different way of thinking about basketball.” How to move correctly as a tall guy on the floor, how to adjust throws to the perfect trajectory and why technique, mental attitude and instinct are perhaps more important than steel muscles – that’s what Geschwindner, who many see as a basketball guru, still preaches to this day.

That doesn’t mean that Steinbach will immediately be the next NBA champion and popular figure made in Würzburg but his sporting development is based on a similar foundation as Nowitzki’s: character building, humility, the will to repeat a thousand times and of course a bit of talent. The most important tip was given to Steinbach by his father, whom Nowitzki still likes to call by his nickname: the “Colossus of Moos” (part of the municipality of Geroldshausen near Würzburg). “Look at everything calmly, don’t let yourself go crazy,” is how Hannes Steinbach describes Papa Burkhard’s advice. Not so easy when the stage suddenly shines much brighter, like on draft night.

There Nowitzki congratulated him in a mischievous video message: “I have known you since you were born. I have followed your path and am glad that you did not inherit your father’s athleticism and hands.” You have to know: Burkhard Steinbach, with his 2.12 meters, was more of a basketball player for rougher practices – his son seems more delicate. Sometimes even like a young Nowitzki.