Dhe Telekom Baskets Bonn fended off Bayern Munich’s first match point in the play-offs of the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and can continue to dream of the first championship title in the club’s history. The Baskets won in an exciting game three with 86:84 (45:40) in Munich and reduced the best-of-five series to 1:2. Game four will again take place in the Audi Dome on Whit Monday (6 p.m., live on MagentaSport).
“It was a very good game from us, we followed our game plan,” said Baskets coach Tuomas Iisalo after the narrow win: “In the end it was only two points, but better than one too few.” He sees the pressure now at the competitor from Munich. “They don’t want to go back to Bonn for a game five. Our team is like a movie villain: you can give this a stab, but it always comes back,” said Iisalo.
In a hard-fought final phase, Javontae Hawkins secured victory with a free throw 20 seconds from time. The Baskets have never won the BBL title before, five times it was only enough for second place. Bonn is in the semi-finals of the play-offs for the first time since 2009. Defending champion Alba Berlin had already qualified for the final on Friday.
After the bitter Baskets defeat in game two, the Bonners braced themselves against the impending end from the start, and a highly intense game developed. For long stretches of the match, it remained an open exchange of blows, both teams could see the importance of the game.
Before the last quarter the lead of the baskets was only one point. But the guests didn’t let themselves be disturbed at first and took advantage of small mistakes by the hosts to pull away to ten points.
But Munich came back again in the final phase and equalized 33 seconds before the end to 84:84. Then Hawkins, the best pitcher of the game with 19 points, secured the Bonn victory.
