AWhilst four of the seven head coach seats in the basketball Bundesliga were filled before this season, only Oldenburg with Pedro Calles and Hamburg with Raoul Korner opted for coaches who had already taken on this responsibility in Germany. In four cases, the choice fell on relatively young trainers who were only known to the general public as co-trainers or junior trainers. After a very successful playing career with five German championships, Anton Gavel entered the coaching business in 2019.
At Ratiopharm Ulm he worked for three years in the youth division and for the farm team before he took over the professional team before this season as the successor to Jaka Lakovic, who had moved to Spain. 41-year-old Lars Masell worked as an assistant coach in the Bundesliga for ten years before taking up his first managerial role in Bayreuth before this season.
Josh King and Joonas Iisalo have been responsible as head coaches in Ludwigsburg and Heidelberg respectively since the summer. Both had experience as head coaches, but not in Germany. Iisalo even won a title in his native Finland and then assisted his older brother Tuomas in Crailsheim and Bonn for three years. King was John Patrick’s right-hand man in Ludwigsburg for three years and went to Prague in 2021 to earn his first spurs as a head coach. When his mentor moved to Japan in 2022, the 37-year-old returned and is now in charge.
Assistants are promoted
With the exception of Iisalo, who had no connection to Heidelberg before his commitment, the other decisions can definitely be seen as deliberate mentoring. John Patrick, who was able to establish Ludwigsburg in the top class, had campaigned for King as his successor. Gavel was brought to Ulm because the management saw potential in him for higher tasks. Masell, who is the only member of the quartet older than forty, had been Raoul Korner’s assistant for eight years.
When the Austrian left Bayreuth in the summer, he pleaded for his former assistant coach as the new man at the top. But of course it takes more than just a good word from your predecessor to get the job. With a coach who has already worked at the club, those responsible know what kind of character they are getting and whether it fits the club’s philosophy. One also hears from the clubs that they want a “fresh coach” who does not have a scratched image. So it’s not surprising that the assistants were also promoted in the two layoffs over the course of this season.
Young coaches depress salaries
Benka Barloschky (35) was planned for the medium term in Hamburg anyway, while Nikola Markovic (40) only joined the coaching staff at Hakro Merlins Crailsheim before the season. The promotion of the men from the second row also has financial advantages, they are quite simply cheaper. Coaches in the basketball league receive less and less money, probably they have never earned so little in the past 15 years as in the current season. Of course, the pandemic has amplified this decade-long trend, causing coaching salaries to fall by 30 to 40 percent over the past five years.
Basically, the clubs have more money available than ten years ago. The fact that the coaches still earn less is because many young coaches who want to get started in top-class sport accept low starting salaries and thus depress salaries. The competition is huge. A coach only has to be on the brink for the club to be offered 100 potential successors. As a result, established coaches have to work for significantly less or, like Denis Wucherer, are unemployed. Others like Henrik Rödl (Egypt) or Sebastian Machowski (Poland) are trying their luck abroad.
Apart from the two Euroleague teams in Berlin and Munich, there are at most two or three clubs in Germany that pay their trainers six-digit net amounts a year. The teams from the lower third of the budget call for 40,000 to 50,000 euros per season. That’s not much for a job with far more than 50 hours per week and without a (mental) day off, with the greatest stress also occurring on the weekends, which is hostile to families. The Spanish ACB, which in many respects is regarded as a model league in Europe, has set a minimum salary for head coaches. But according to reports, coaches there waive this right just to get a job.
The author was coach of the year twice in Germany.
