On Sunday lunchtime, basketball player Bastian Doreth made a call for help.

He is in Würzburg, where the Bundesliga game between Würzburg and Bayreuth is supposed to start in less than three hours.

He himself won't play for Bayreuth that day because of an injury to his toe, but as captain he travels with his team and experiences, as he said later on the phone, how a feeling of insecurity spreads there.

Christopher Meltzer

Sports correspondent in Munich.

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Because in Würzburg, a club organizes the game that reported several members of its team with corona symptoms and a positive rapid test the day before. The head coach and four players did not appear in the hall on Sunday. And although those who are now preparing for the game can show a negative PCR test - the time of the smear test: Sunday morning - those responsible from Würzburg and Bayreuth still agree: They don't want to play. An application for dismissal is submitted to the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL). At 12:36 p.m. Bastian Doreth wrote on his Twitter channel: "From my point of view, completely crazy to let the game (...) take place today".

The calls for help from Würzburg are heard, but not heard.

The BBL rejects the application for cancellation with reference to the negative PCR tests in writing.

It has to be played.

In the end, ten Bayreuthers win against nine Würzburgers.

The day after, Doreth tweeted: “Today there is no positive news, but positive tests from Würzburg!” He links the BBL account and their hashtag for this season: #WelcomeToWow.

On Tuesday afternoon, it was clear: At least 12 players, coaches and supervisors from Würzburg were infected with the corona virus according to the PCR test.

Eight of them took part in the home game against Bayreuth.

And so after this basketball game there remains a question that goes beyond basketball: Couldn't this result have been prevented, perhaps even had to be prevented?

It can no longer be ignored in Germany that professional sport is facing its biggest problem in the second winter pandemic, mainly because of the virus variant Omikron.

Iserlohn and Munich can no longer field enough players in the German Ice Hockey League.

In the volleyball Bundesliga, the top game between Berlin and Düren has been canceled.

And even in the Bundesliga, the postponement of the first duel of the second half of the season between Munich and Mönchengladbach is being discussed.

Doreth finds the decision "incomprehensible"

In Würzburg, the health department has ordered the basketball team to be quarantined for 14 days.

The case is clear in this regard - yet so ambiguous in its details that it is worth investigating.

It could become a lesson about the problems of professional sport in this phase of the pandemic, in which old rules of conduct meet new virus variants - and in which the perspectives of the protagonists differ greatly.