If you want to enter the office of the Würzburg basketball players, you have to pass a long walk, around two meters wide, hardly any daylight, it could also be the catacombs of a hall. Pictures of exceptional players hang on the left wall, all of whom have thrown baskets in Würzburg: Alex King, Maximilian Kleber, Dirk Nowitzki. Names that show that here, in the Zellerau district in the west of the city.
It is a quiet Thursday afternoon in the training center of the Würzburg Baskets. At the bottom, a few children throw balls through the hall, at the top, managing director Steffen Lieblers receives in his glazed office and then drops into one of the two black leather armchairs in front of his desk. One might think that his eyes are a bit smaller than usual, after all, the Champions League game against Promitheas Patras was only lost in the first extension the evening before, then the second and ultimately 115: 119. So it was a pretty long basketball evening, but Liebler says: “It works, I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
As a favorite, to talk about what the club has announced before the game, his gaze wanders out of the office, out of the hallway on which Jochen Bähr is currently running. He is one of five partners of the Baskets and, as Liebler now says, “one of the protagonists” of this new Würzburg history.
In recent years, Würzburg has swung up from the subsistence level to a playoff contender
She tells how a Bundesliga club who has jumped up from the subsistence level to a playoff candidate in recent years wants to go even higher. Here in the training center, thousands of baskets have been thrown since the Corona pandemic has subsided-but the crisis at the time drawn Würzburg like few other clubs. And now, five years later, Liebler says sentences like: “We no longer need to hide. Or: “It is not a must, but our goal of playing European permanently.”
There are words that have long been preceded by deeds. While Bamberg, Würzburg’s largest rival, most recently qualified for the Playoffs in 2022, the Lower Franconia reached the semi -finals in the previous year after mixing up the entire Bundesliga. And now, that gives the story a spicy note, Würzburg has taken up an approach from the unpopular neighbor and could thus further degenerate.
In Bamberg, Wolfgang Heyder, now a partner in Würzburg, built up a network as a long -time managing director that offered the sponsors and partners of the association a platform to exchange knowledge, use synergies and grow together. On Wednesday, the Würzburger basically presented the same idea. Now Laubler asks a pointed -be -cly grin in his office: “The idea is good. Why not take over and do better? The development should go on. Such tools help us.”
Not only the partners of the baskets should benefit from the new connections, the Baskets themselves also want to draw added value and gain new supporters. “This is the basis for everything,” explains Liebler, “The more partners we have, the more ways we have to grow.” And then when the plan opens, Würzburg could then finally leave the Bambergs behind? “If we can overtake Bamberg with it, of course I don’t say no,” replies Liebler, “but that’s why we didn’t start it.” The baskets are concerned with their own progress, about making the last step towards a natural playoff candidate, so that they are also leaving traces in Europe.
The club wants to experience evenings as in Athens more often in the future
A swivel to the Sunel Arena of Athens, around 20 kilometers north of the center in a dilapidated area, it is the past week. Even in front of the hall, long before the jumping ball, dogs rage dogs, leaching their teeth and thus providing the preliminary stage of what is later to follow among the grandede roofs. The whistles of the AEK fans drill into the eardrum as if they were trampolines.
Würzburg plays an extraordinary first quarter and leads after ten minutes 34:19-the longer the Champions League duel lasts, the more the team’s atmosphere seems to add. It is not just loud, the Greeks romp in the stands. When the referees make a decision against AEK, they jump up, storm on the railings and cover the impartial with tirades. Sometimes you think you would drop the last inhibitions and climb over the parapet. Up to the last minutes of the game, Würzburg is always in the lead, but then the ball just doesn’t want to go into the basket anymore. Anyone who is sitting in the stands feel how the Würzburgers slip the game from minute to minute. At the end there is an 84:77 on the scoreboard, AEK still won. It is a victory of the fans.
Evenings like in Athens, says Liebler, wants to experience the club more often in the future. They are the longing of the baskets. In order to breastfeed them, however, it needs what the so -called business club has made: cooperation, developments, progress.
First of all, as Lieler emphasizes, it was important to cope with “the little crisis” in which the team is currently. In mid-January, the Würzburgers were still third, then they lost seven of the past nine Bundesliga games. On Sunday there is now a big task at Alba Berlin.
“We were on an absolute high flight for two years,” says Liebler, “now it is the first time that things are not going so smoothly.” That’s the way it is in sport. No reason to worry. It is important that the general direction is. And that, says Steffen Liebler, can always be said.
#Würzburg #Baskets #BBL #high
