Der ewige Svetislav Pesic
Just one day before the first leg, Bayern parted ways with world champion coach Gordon Herbert. A no less prominent name was presented as his successor on December 22nd: Svetislav Pesic took over responsibility for the Munich team for the second time in his career. The now 76-year-old was head coach of FC Bayern from 2012 to 2016 and won the German championship with the club in 2014.
Around 10 years later, the Serb, who became European champion with Germany in 1993 and world champion with the then Yugoslavia in 2002, is supposed to steer Munich back on the road to success – especially in the Euroleague. Because while Bayern are comfortably at the top of the table in the Bundesliga with 13 wins from 14 games, they are only in 16th place (out of 20) in the Euroleague. Under Pesic, however, the form curve is still upwards: Bayern recently won two of their last three Euroleague games. On Wednesday evening, world champion Andi Obst became the match winner with 37 points in a 96:89 victory over Baskonia. Bayern will face Olympiacos Piraeus and ex-Baskets player Tyson Ward this evening.
“The change of coach obviously makes our preparation a little more difficult, as we cannot use the first leg for analysis and necessary adjustments. Bayern have changed some important defensive and offensive concepts under Coach Pesic, such as full-field defense. Munich are very good at interrupting the flow of the opponent’s game and aggressively defending the pick-and-roll. On offense, they try to take advantage of mismatches immediately by trying to exploit their size advantages near the basket with practically all players. So their style hasn’t changed completely, but there are some “Things they do differently now,” summarizes Baskets-Headcoach Marko Stankovic together and added: “The most important thing, however, is still our team defense and how we defend individually against their very strong individual players.”
By the way: Svetislav Pesic won his first win as Munich head coach against Bonn, of all places. On December 6th, 2012 the Baskets lost in Munich with 91:104.
Dinwiddie out, Dimitrijevic in
The next big blow came on January 4th: For personal reasons, the contract with Spencer Dinwiddie, which was originally valid until the end of the season, was mutually terminated. The former NBA professional made five Bundesliga and 11 Euroleague appearances for Munich. North Macedonian international Nenad Dimitrijevic joined the team as a replacement this week.
