Bundesliga: “Unormal sums”: How to move young basketball players to the USA

Hannes Steinbach is very modest for the fact that he is already being traded at the next Dirk Nowitzki. The 18-year-old lives in a shared apartment in Würzburg and takes the short way to the training center on the outskirts of the city.

The basketball talent welcomes teammates and employees with a bakery bag in his hand-but at the latest when the way to the hall, Steinbach is clear which footsteps he tries to enter from this summer: pictures of the former NBA master Nowitzki and Maximilian Kleber hang on the walls. Both are Würzburger and both successfully accomplished the arduous path into the best league in the world.

Bundesliga boss: “A real exodus”

Steinbach will also leave his tranquil life in Franconian homeland this summer and will also switch to Washington to College. The reason for this is the sporting perspective on the one hand – but the finances also played a role. “This is very difficult for the Bundesliga because there is abnormal sums on the college,” said Steinbach of the German Press Agency.

These “abnormal sums” should quickly become a major problem for the Bundesliga. If talents in the United States are allowed to play for the best league in the world and also collect significantly more financially than in the European professional company, young players can no longer be held long.

“This is a real exodus. As a BBL alone, we can’t really do anything. That is an international problem, so we addressed the Fiba World Association,” said league managing director Stefan Holz.

Players can come back after training

The problem bears the letters N, I and L and stands for the English terms “name”, “image” and “lieness”. Since July 2021, college athletes have been able to benefit financially from their name and image. The United States has become a kind of all-round carefree package when it comes to basketball training since the Supreme Court judgment.

“A solution must be found where the College League NCAA is financially responsible for changing, as is the case with transfers between individual clubs,” said functionary wood. At the moment “the player contracts are not worth the paper if the players can just go to college”. In addition to Steinbach, Braunschweig’s Sanana Fru and Ludwigsburg’s Jacob Patrick also draw on college.

The players could come back after their training. “But for the moment they are lost for us.” It is about players who have been trained nationally and “could develop into faces of the league,” said Holz.

Steinbach takes Nowitzki comparison with humor

This applies to the Würzburger Steinbach. The U18 European champion can keep up with the Bundesliga professionals in his first season-and is recommended for higher tasks. At the University of Washington, a college awaits him where other Germans were already trained in Chris Welp, Patrick Femerling and Detlef Schrempf. Schrempf is still on site today and could become a kind of mentor for Steinbach.

Steinbach’s father Burkhard, who wears the nickname “Koloss von Moos”, played with the big Nowitzki in Germany. The talented junior still knows the most successful German player from his childhood. “The comparisons always come very early and quickly. I take the comparisons with humor,” says Steinbach, when he is seen again and again as the next Nowitzki.

Because: there is still a lot missing in order to be able to follow the national icon. Steinbach (2.04 meters) is a few centimeters smaller than Nowitzki (2.13 meters). He also lacks the three -point throw that is practically a prerequisite in today’s NBA. The hard work that he once had to do as a teenager on the home farm for the first pocket money is also imminent by Steinbach am College – when developing his game.

Hartenstein warns of “short money”

A German who makes the leap into the NBA without college is Isaiah Hartenstein. The center has been playing in the world’s best league for seven years – this year he could be the first German with main round winner Oklahoma City Thunder after Nowitzki.

Hartenstein warns of a hasty change to college. “Now with college, the German players have to see if they want the short money or the long-term money,” said the 26-year-old. Many young athletes got stuck on the college. “In Europe you get to the NBA faster, get to this level faster,” said Hartenstein. Compared to the top contracts in the NBA, the salaries are on the college peanuts.