Jonas Richter almost missed his anniversary, there’s just a lot going on for the basketball player at the moment. 300 games for the Chemnitz 99ers, 150 of them in the starting lineup, an entire athlete’s life in the same club – this rarity would almost have been lost in Saxony and the rest of the republic if a reporter from the local press hadn’t made the 26-year-old aware of his milestone . “I didn’t know that at all, but of course it makes me proud,” says the 2.07 meter man on the phone.
He is currently even more pleased about another record number, and it is slowly becoming scary. After beating a team called Spojnia Stargard in the Fiba Europe Cup on Wednesday evening, the 99ers have now won twelve games in a row across all competitions. In the league they have won all six games since the opening defeat against Ulm, which means third place, well ahead of the struggling FC Bayern. You’re through in the cup and the opponents in the European Cup may be lower class so far, but wins are wins, there’s no need to complain about that.
The fact is: alongside the footballers from Leverkusen (also twelve wins in a row), the 99ers are currently Germany’s strongest professional team. “What’s happening here is special for the whole region, that gives me a very good feeling,” says Richter, who recently helped a lot in Tübingen to wipe the opponent off the floor. 106:68, a so-called “blowout”, a huge number in which Richter even hit three-pointer after three-pointer at some point. Not actually the power forward’s specialty, but: “If you don’t think about it too much, things just fall into place.”
There’s a lot going on in Chemnitz right now, where a success story in the sporting East is manifesting itself – and there are reasons for that. The club had already surprisingly reached the playoffs of the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) in the last two years because it had built a successful team with a small budget and clever tricks. Because he has relied on continuity with coach Rodrigo Pastore, a bald Argentine, since 2015, even if there were occasional slacks. Because the opponents are getting a lot of attention from the roar of the Chemnitz exhibition hall. And because of guys like Jonas Richter, who is wholeheartedly involved in “a project in my homeland.”
Open detailed view
Chemnitz coach Rodrigo Pastore has been at the club for ages. A rarity in German basketball, where fluctuation is otherwise high.
(Photo: Markus Ulmer/Imago)
His parents’ house is still in Auerswalde in the north of the city, and when Richter talks about his nine years as a professional, he does so in gentle Saxon. “The special thing here is the whole organization in the club and the history of where we come from,” he says, “starting as fifteenth in the second division – and now we are way ahead in the BBL.” Amazing. “We’re already quite far early in the season,” coach Pastore recently explained. You could see what he means at the league game in Tübingen: His team attacked the promoted team like a swarm of mosquitoes in a small rotation, there was movement and aggressiveness everywhere, every player stabbed the zone with unorthodox moves. In the end, in addition to Richter, the Bonn-born 99ers top scorer Kevin Yebo, Wühler Jeff Garrett and, above all, the other US professionals in the squad also shone: DeAndre Landsdowne, 34, and Wes van Beck, 27.
With DeAndre Lansdowne and Wes van Beck, the 99ers have two Americans who can decide games
The additions represent an adjustment in the club’s purchasing policy: Because Chemnitz is unlikely to be among the top eight in the league in terms of budget, it needs ideas in the niche. After a year with some wild phases (which also included the doping suspension of young professional Jason George), the club around managing director Steffen Herhold has shifted its priorities. Experience and reliability are now particularly welcome. “Our recruitment is based on professional players who can decide close games,” says Richter.
The Bundesliga-proven playmaker Lansdowne came from Strasbourg, three-point shooter van Beck from Estonia – he is currently the best distance thrower in the BBL. Both are considered mentality players whose careers only took off through second-chance education. Lansdowne once even interrupted his career as a basketball player and had to temporarily work as a bricklayer in construction. “That speaks for the attitude,” explains Jonas Richter, “everyone here wants to get better, everyone has fought for their place through hard work.”
These attributes obviously fit perfectly with the local pride of many people in Chemnitz. And they also have a sense of humor, after all, the 99ers have been employing “the strangest mascot in German sport” for several years, as the newspaper Die Welt marveled: “Karli”, a cheerful plush philosopher who, more seriously, also exists as a statue in the city , which was once called Karl-Marx-Stadt.
