The motivation to add a few percent more can have a variety of reasons; The FC Bayern basketball players had obviously tracked down a very rare one late on Sunday afternoon. The current namesake of the local hall has offered 1,000 euros for every dunking to the SOS Children’s Villages, and so several players felt called upon to take part in this fundraising campaign, especially center Danko Brankovic in the final phase, who stuffed the ball into the basket three times . The game against the Würzburg Baskets was already decided anyway, so why not put on a little show?
The Bundesliga compulsory program ended with an expected 87:64 (42:34) for Munich. The final points in a sold-out hall were also important because Bayern have not had a home game for more than two weeks. “I’m very happy with the second half,” said coach Pablo Laso afterwards, saying his team showed a better mentality and better defensive work.
“We will now compete again with teams that we can compete with,” says Würzburg coach Sasa Filipovski
The Würzburgers also ensured that things didn’t get a little more exciting, at least in the first half of the game, as they had only arrived with a league defeat: Despite often being in good positions, the shooting rate remained so low that Sasa Filipovski’s team only had one short shot came within three points. The coach had already said before the game that you could certainly learn a lot from a Euroleague team. After the game he said: “We will now compete again with teams we can compete with.”
After the well-known additions in the summer, there is actually no such thing as a second guard at Bayern. However, some prominent names were missing from the Bavarian duel. Before this duel, there were only four Bayern players who had played in all games. Now coach Laso rotated heavily again, this time world champions Isaac Bonga and Andreas Obst, who had been on the floor for a long time in the 67:76 win against Fenerbahce Istanbul on Friday evening, were given a break.
One person who played in all ten competitive games is Leandro Bolmaro, who had many eye-catching scenes against Würzburg. In the middle of the third quarter, the Argentine shooting guard was the first to reach the double-digit point mark (he ended up with twelve), so he helped ensure that Bayern were able to pull away decisively in this phase. The other long-term runner is Sylvain Francisco, who was the best scorer with 13 points along with Carsen Edwards. In the end it was what you would call a united team effort.
