Nuremberg (AP) – Gordon Herbert was served. After the sporting embarrassment that spoiled the new national basketball coach’s start into the term of office, the 62-year-old didn’t want to say much in the narrow and brightly lit press room of the Nuremberg Arena.
“I take 100 percent responsibility,” said Herbert after the 66:69 against Estonia, which not only increases the sporting pressure on the German basketball players in the World Cup qualification, but also increases the severely weakened and not at all well-rehearsed team without all NBA and Euroleague professionals could further unsettle.
Against Poland under pressure
But there isn’t much time to think about it. The team around captain Robin Benzing will head straight to Poland, where the second qualifying match for the title fights in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia will take place in Lublin on Sunday evening (8 p.m. / Magentasport). “We’ll travel to Poland with the same team. It’s a very good group, but we just didn’t play well. We’ll find a way,” announced Herbert.
Instead of holding the disappointed and disappointing team responsible, the Canadian protected his professionals and directed the displeasure to his own person. “It is as it is,” said the coach – and seemed a bit at a loss because of the not factored in setback.
High performers are missing
Herbert’s life is anything but easy in his first two international matches. The NBA professionals around Dennis Schröder and the huge talent Franz Wagner are missing as well as the players from Master Alba Berlin and Cup winners FC Bayern because they had to play in the Euroleague. But this only applied to the game against the Estonians. When asked whether he would get reinforcements for the groundbreaking Poland game, Herbert replied: “No.” The eternally young conflict between the world federation Fiba and the Euroleague remains a hot topic, in the case of the Germans now exacerbated by the sporting false start.
National coach Herbert addressed his team with encouraging words. “I told them it’s sport. It’s not the result we wanted. But it happened now.” The 1000 spectators in the newly built arena at Tillypark previously saw a fight at eye level – even though Germany had defeated the Estonians around three years ago with 86:43. “We knew they were good throwers. We allowed too many threesomes. We didn’t score well ourselves,” said Bamberg’s Christian Sengfelder, who was the only German player to impress with 21 points.
The veterans Benzing and Bastian Doreth as well as the formally strong Sengfelder should now be particularly in demand on the away trip. “We would have liked a different outcome, but that’s the way sport is. That’s why we love sport too,” said Doreth after the painful defeat in his hometown of Nuremberg. Poland also lost their opening game, in Israel it was 61:69. If you want to be in Asia in 2023, you shouldn’t afford another defeat in the second group game.
“The World Cup is a very important event, a must, so to speak,” said Armin Andres, Vice President of the German Basketball Federation (DBB), at Magentasport. On the way there and to the European Championships at home in 2022 in Cologne and Berlin, the first qualification phase should actually only be equivalent to fulfilling a sporting duty – numerous failures or not. A successful World Cup qualification is a must, especially since the basketball players were not particularly successful at the last three World Cups: In 2010 and 2019 they were eliminated in the preliminary round, in 2014 they did not qualify at all.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211125-99-146479 / 4
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