"Now on to the German championship!" said Oscar da Silva when Alba Berlin had reached the end of its international season.

The announcement of the basketball pro does not bode well for the competition in the Bundesliga, as the players of the MBC from Weißenfels had to find out on Sunday when the Berliners dispatched them about 43 hours after their last game in the Euroleague, in Monaco, with 95:66 points .

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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This Tuesday evening, the Baskets Oldenburg should experience something similar at the game in Berlin.

Alba has ten Bundesliga matches to play in the next 29 days and if the team wins them they will be on the mission to defend their title as number one and with home rights in the crucial games of the play-offs.

“Better than last year”

"We lost important players at the beginning of the season: Peyton Siva, Simone Fontecchio, Jayson Granger, Niels Giffey - and Coach Aito," recalls sports director Himar Ojeda: "Nevertheless, we're better than last year.

We won 14 games in the Euroleague, defeated Fenerbahce and Red Star twice each, beat Makkabi and Milan, Panathinaikos and Olympiakos.

That's fantastic."

The home victories over Kazan and St. Petersburg do not count as the Russian teams were excluded because of their homeland's invasion of Ukraine.

Alba had already played all six games against the Russians.

That is quite important;

the long journeys are just as exhausting as the games.

Since they had to stop training and games for a fortnight in January due to corona infections, the Berliners have been rushing through a schedule with plenty of catch-up games anyway.

The Berliners have already completed 62 mandatory dates this season.

The fact that the semi-finals and finals for the cup are part of it also contributes to their remarkably good mood.

Although coach Israel González always claims that the young team should learn and be better in the next game than in the previous one, there is no doubt in Berlin: the championship should follow the cup.

Unlike FC Bayern Munich, who sent a selection of youth and reserve players to the Bundesliga game in Oldenburg last week without head coach Andrea Trinchieri and accepted the foreseeable defeat in order to save their best for the big stage, for the offs against Barcelona, ​​the Berliners want to convert the high number of beats in their games into intensity on the floor.

Let loose?

That's not the Berlin way.

When González sends young players into the game, it doesn't mean he doesn't mean business.

Malte Delow personifies the Berlin way.

In ten days, the 1.99 meter tall winger will be 21 years old, but he has already played 59 Euroleague games.

He was among the top five internationally 15 times this season.

If it's not enough for him to compete with stars like Nikola Mirotic and Kyle Hines, he gets playing time in the jersey of Alba's cooperation partner Bernau in Pro B, the third division.

Delow was already part of the team at the Berlin championships in the past two years.

Ojeda considers him the player of his team who has made the biggest step in development this season.

That's remarkable as he compares to the likes of Maodo Lo, Jaleen Smith and Oscar da Silva, Tamir Blatt and Yovel Zoosman, Christ Koumadje and Ben Lammers, all of whom are growing in strength.

Delow and Jonas Mattisseck, 22, who also rose from the youth team in Berlin, are developing into key players.

"The cup victory was the victory of Malte and Jonas," enthuses Ojeda.

Both are tied to Alba beyond the season.

But that doesn't prevent lucrative offers from the competition, as Ojeda knows from painful experience.

"Berlin plays Euroleague," says the sports director.

"As a player, you only improve when you play a role at clubs like Efes or Real.

Above that there is only the NBA.

But not every contract there is better than playing in the Euroleague.” His hope: “Malte and Jonas know what they have in our program.”