Ludwigsburg. For several weeks the main round championship of the MHP giants Ludwigsburg in the basketball Bundesliga has been on the way. And so the various BBL trainers who came with their teams to the Ludwigsburg MHP Arena could not only adjust to an uncomfortable opponent from Ludwigsburg who has been undefeated in his home hall for 720 days. No, they could be sure that after the game they would be asked how they assessed the giants’ chances for the title this season. Although the giants can secure first place in the main round with a win today in Bamberg (8.30 p.m.), the yellow-blacks saw only a few coaches as favorites for the BBL title.
“I don’t see them on the same level as the two Euroleague teams,” said Bayreuth coach Raoul Korner. His assessment coincided with that of many coaches: “I don’t think that if Alba Berlin and Bayern Munich don’t have a double burden, Ludwigsburg will win in a series.”
The giants would not be the first team in recent BBL history that would not crown a sensational main round with currently 28 wins and only two defeats with a championship title. In 2016/17, Ratiopharm Ulm set a BBL record with only two defeats this season, but then unfortunately failed in the BBL semifinals after five games at the Baskets Oldenburg. “In retrospect, that’s a huge disappointment,” Per Günther remembers the season in an interview with our newspaper. The development player has been wearing the orange jersey from Ulm since 2008 and is one of the faces of the BBL. Günther by no means harbors a grudge against the game mode, according to which the best team is not chosen as champions at the end of a main round – as is the case in football and handball. “A basketball championship without play-offs would not be a championship in the end,” he says.
Günther only feels treated unfairly by the fate that befell his team in 2017. “It’s so frustrating when at the end of the season, when it comes to the sausage, you’re 20 to 30 percent worse than the months before,” says Günther, referring to several injury problems that robbed the Ulm team of the title chances at the time.
The giants are far from such worries. The main round title is almost certain. Should that not succeed with the Bambergers, who according to the current state will also be Ludwigsburg’s opponents in the first play-off round, the giants will start a new attempt two days later. On Sunday (8.30 p.m.) the Telekom Baskets Bonn will come to the MHP-Arena.
Coach John Patrick recently began to take care of his players for the play-offs, spreading the game minutes over as many shoulders as possible in recent weeks. “The number of strokes will be unimaginably high”, Günther looks ahead to the play-offs, in which his seventh-placed Ulm team will also take part: “Ludwigsburg has two or three great players who play 35 minutes per game. I don’t know whether it is humanly possible to pull this off. “
Jonas Wohlfarth-Bottermann can assess the situation well. The center and co-captain of the giants was part of the Ulm successful team in 2016/17 and already has the tight schedule in mind. “That can be a different burden. There is nothing wrong with approaching the matter strategically now, so that you can survive the series with the largest possible team, ”says“ Wobo ”. The 31-year-old looks back on the successful main round with the Ulm team with a laughing rather than a crying eye. “It was still great that you achieved something like that,” he says of the league record, which sparked a lot of euphoria among the basketball fans in Ulm: “But, of course, it was a bit bitter at the end.” Doubt at the play-off system did not let the defeat arise with him. “It can also turn out the other way around and have a Cinderella story in which you start from eighth place and win,” says the giant.
Even among the fans there is no resentment that the giants are still far from the championship despite having a sovereign main round. “I grew up playing basketball, have been following this sport for a long time and have played it myself,” says Sebastian Lempert, who headed the Dunking Dukes fan club for years. “For me, play-offs are simply part of basketball. It’s what makes this competition beautiful. “
For Lempert, the attraction lies in addition to the great tension in the escalation: “You win the championship in a direct duel with the toughest competitor. You don’t have to argue about whether you had a small period of weakness in November, for example. “He is optimistic about the finals:” Anything is possible in any case. “
And there were also exceptions among the BBL coaches who believed the giants could do a lot. According to Silvano Poropat, ex-giant trainer and meanwhile at Central German BC, Ludwigsburg called Ludwigsburg “the perfect underdog”. After the Giants’ latest 106:69 victory against the Fraport Skyliners, Frankfurt coach Sebastian Gleim became even clearer: “I think that they are a clear candidate to become champions.”
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