Grown men lay crying in each other's arms, the national coach couldn't speak a word, and Dennis Schröder cheered with the fans in the stands - this is what it looked like in Split, when the German national basketball team played on July 4th without their supposedly strongest players qualified for the Olympics.
The elimination in the quarter-finals in Tokyo against the Slovenian selection with Luca Doncic should have been the start for more.
Michael Reinsch
Correspondent for sports in Berlin.
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The European Championship 22 awaits with games in Cologne and Berlin, the team is qualified for the World Championship 23, and the Olympic Games in Paris 24 are its goal. So many talented players from the NBA, Euroleague and the offspring of the Bundesliga clubs are pushing into the German selection as never before, that one has to say: There has never been so much perspective.
All the more astonishing are the results of PotA's potential analysis, which the state has established to control its top-class sports funding, which amounts to millions. The German Basketball Federation is at the bottom of the evaluation of 26 associations, behind gymnastics, taekwondo and fencing. The number one, on the other hand, turns out to be the German Athletics Association four days after the former head coach Jürgen Mallow diagnosed a total crash in Tokyo. It ranks number three on its structure and number one on success and perspective.
The breakdown by discipline, with open water swimming at the top, shows how the seemingly complicated system works: actually, Olympic, world and European champion Florian Wellbrock is in the lead. Jump women, number three out of 103, stands for Olympic champion, world and European champion Malaika Mihambo, all-around men and throw / push women in positions five and six stand for decathlon world champion Niklas Kaul, who was injured in Tokyo, and the discus silver medalist , Kristin Pudenz. Also among the top eleven: run / walk women and throw / push men, codes behind which Konstanze Klosterhalfen and Johannes Vetter can be easily recognized, the third place in the world championship over 10,000 meters from Doha and - except in Tokyo - the strongest javelin thrower in the world .
Logical: Those who belong to the best in the world yesterday and today also have good prospects tomorrow. If it were up to the PotAs, the victories of the basketball players would be considered surprise successes.