Should Tibor Pleiss find a few free minutes this weekend, his path will definitely lead to a river. A walk with friends on the Rhine, a view of the Deutzer Brücke from the Schäl Sick, this is home for Pleiss, he was born in Bergisch-Gladbach and grew up on Aachener Strasse in downtown Cologne. “I would be happy if one or the other door opens and I can get out,” he says. “For us it is true: Home is where the Dom is.”
Pleiss, 31, is not just any Cologne native, but rather one of the longest at 2.21 meters. When he strolls through the city, he lines up somewhere between the television tower and the crane houses. Only: Due to the pandemic, idleness is likely to be tight.
Because the protocol provides for basketball players to move mainly between the hotel and the Lanxess Arena in the east of Cologne from Friday to Sunday. There Pleiss and his club Anadolu Efes Istanbul will compete in the Final Four of the Euroleague, the European premier class and the world’s second strongest league after the NBA.
Pleiss won championships and trophies abroad, but he has always stayed from Cologne
On Friday evening, the showdown in the semifinals against ZSKA Moscow, where Pleiss duels in a direct duel with another German: Johannes Voigtmann from Thuringia, center at the major Russian club. Two basketball players Made in Germany among Europe’s best, that doesn’t happen too often – and this time someone will even play for the title in the end. Much more is not possible apart from the American professional league NBA.
Should Pleiss make it to the final, it would be “the greatest of my career”, he says without pondering for a second, “at home in Cologne, that would be the absolute ultimate.” The greatest possible triumph at the place where it all began: The story is good for Schmonzette.
During a corona infection and a several-week injury break, he recently had time to review everything. Overall, Pleiss thinks that his career went “great”. Bundesliga (BBL) in Bamberg, NBA in Utah, plus Barcelona, Valencia, Istanbul – he saw the world, got to know Neymar (as a club colleague at Barça) and Lukas Podolski (when both played for Galatasaray). He won championships and trophies and was a national player. But, that shows his noticeable anticipation, he has always remained Cologne.
As a child, he threw his first baskets on the green belt; his father had bought him a ball at the gas station with loyalty points. On the Nike-Platz between the Belgian Quarter and Ehrenfeld, Pleiss grew to a veritable size. In 2007 he made his debut with the Cologne 99ers in the BBL. So now the return to the final spectacle of the Euroleague. He finally wants to win this tough tournament.
Almost 40 games are behind the last four teams, which include Istanbul and Moscow as well as FC Barcelona and Olimpia Milan. FC Bayern narrowly failed in the quarter-finals against the Italians, while Pleiss and Efes also prevailed in five games against Real Madrid. As a center, he has been taking care of rebounds, blocks and everything that can be used near the basket in the versatile Turkish collective since 2018.
The level and the competition in the Euroleague are remarkable
Three years of club membership is unusually long, because in the Euroleague professionals often move on after one season. You are striving for more salary, a more prominent role or more glamor in the US – not so Pleiss. He now values continuity. “I felt at home at Efes right from the start, we were successful, the team chemistry was right,” he says, “and I know Turkish culture very well from Cologne’s multiculturalism: I grew up with kebab.”
He gets along well with playmaker Shane Larkin, arguably the fastest basketball player in Europe. But actors such as the former Munich-based Vasilije Micic or Dirk Nowitzki’s former NBA colleague Rodrigue Beaubois have been working together at Efes for a long time.
It is also thanks to such professionals that basketball has developed in Europe. The level and the competition in the Euroleague are remarkable – only the Germans mostly just watched in the end. The only German winner of the competition is Patrick Femerling, who triumphed with Barcelona in 2003. Pleiss knows him from his very young years: “I played with him in the national team, great players, great career.”
If you take a closer look, there are two other Germans who were successful in the previous formats of the Euroleague: Christian Welp won the “Fiba Euroleague” with Olympiakos in 1997, when the world association was still acting as the host itself. Three years later, Michael Koch did the same with Panathinaikos. Pleiss can now catch up with these role models in German basketball. His claim is clear: “With a Euroleague title, I could establish myself in the history books.” And Cologne would finally have a really big winner again.
.
