Gordon Herbert had a wonderful summer, as he revealed on the phone on Tuesday morning. The coach of Bayern Munich’s basketball players, equipped in addition to his Canadian with a Finnish passport, therefore spent five weeks in Finland in July and August. In his adopted home Pyhämaa, the family has had a summer house for many years directly on the Baltic Sea, including 1.7 hectares of land. Herbert Roded the forest there, chopped wood, “but I also drove Jetski or with the kayak in the sea,” said the 66-year-old. It was probably pretty rainy and cool, but it doesn’t matter, he needed the distance after a decent season in Munich that ended with the German championship title. And the previous, no less demanding cycle as a national coach-including the World Cup title 2023.
But when Herbert came back to Munich before his second season, a bad news suffered him. He also had to accept shocked how Lithuania’s playmaker Rokas Jokubaitis turned his left knee in a long step in the European Championship game against Finland. The 24-year-old has already been operated on in Munich, and according to the association, he is in any case for six months that Lithuanian media report a cruciate ligament tear including meniscal damage. “In my opinion, he is the best point in Europe, we were extremely looking forward to him. It is very hard to replace him,” says Herbert, who makes no secret of the fact that Jokubaitis was the key staff of the Munich for the coming season. Now you have to fill a large gap there, at a time when most players have long signed new contracts. Others who are still without a club “go in NBA camps”, as Herbert says, where they try to find what they are still looking for.
Herbert had to have such important players as important actors such as top scorer Carsen Edwards (Virtus Bologna), Center Devin Booker (Olimpia Milan), building player Shabazz Napier (unknown) and defense expert Nick Weiler-Babb (Anadolu Efes), all were pillars of the Munich system. Ivan Kharchenkov, whom Bayern died, switched to College (University of Arizona) this summer. Players like Leon Kratzer (Paris Basketball), Wenyen Gabriel (Panathinaikos Athens), Isiaha Mike (Partizan Belgrade), Kamar Baldwin (Saski Baskonia), Justinian Jessup (Ratiopharm Ulm) and Xavier Rathan-Mayes came to Munich, which Bavaria is back on the national title. But they also got jokubaitis in order to be able to compete in the increasingly financial Euroleague. Herbert therefore says: “We still have to sign a few players.”
:Mumbru releases chief role again
Because the national basketball coach is not fit after his illness, his assistant will act as a head coach for the rest of the European Championship games. The Spaniard, who suffers from inflammation of the pancreas, remains with the team.
“There are too many games, we are burned up,” says Munich’s international Justus Hollatz
On Monday they returned from the preparation tournament from Cagliari, after a 75:89 defeat in the final against Olimpia Milan. The Bavarian lacked eight international players, including the one at the European Championships Andreas Obst, Justus Hollatz, Oscar da Silva and Kratzer. Johannes Voigtmann already traveled from the European Championship with a kniveling, that should hardly be a consolation for the Munich. “Vladimir Lucic also has a minor injury, but that should be done in the next few days,” says Herbert. In Italy, he inevitably filled the squad with Pro-B talents, there were only five Bayern professionals.
“I think we will need a 15-man rotation in the future,” Herbert said a few weeks ago. But this sentence turns out more and more than a dream. So far, only 13 players have signed, Voigtmann, whose injury should not be as serious, and jokubaitis are longer.
And so Herbert, much earlier than planned, is confronted again with the great topic of overload. That was the central problem of Munich last season when she whistled towards the end of the last hole, also a total of around 80 season games for cross -competition. Now it is becoming more and more, thanks to an even larger Euroleague and an additional club in the Bundesliga (whose playoffs last dragged on until the end of June). Bayern-Pointguard Hollatz recently noticed critically in the EM blog: “The topic is not new, but at some point there is the point where it cannot go on: there are too many games, we are heated. The associations and leagues must finally leave the old paths and ways of thinking, they have to think about something.”
Herbert sees it very similarly, “we are in the process of killing our players, I don’t think so much about the physical, but above all of mental health”. But the schedule is the reality in which his team has to move. “I don’t know what the best solution is, I only know that further injuries are at risk.”
Bayern’s next tests will take place again in Italy, on Saturday and Sunday Bayern will meet Virtus Bologna with a fuselage squad. They could use their shooter Carsen Edwards well. Also on September 26th, at the Bundesliga start against promoted Jena. And in the 80, 90 or 100 season games that will follow before Coach Herbert withdraws back to his house in the Finnish forests.
