The German Basketball Association wants to have clarified all insurance issues with its NBA professionals by the start of the preparation for the European Championships. In the past, there had repeatedly been problems because of this.
“The objective is to establish planning security before the start of the training course so that the coach knows with whom he can plan,” said DBB Secretary General Wolfgang Brenscheidt. The German team under national coach Gordon Herbert will start their preparation for the European Championship with a preliminary round in Cologne and the final round in Berlin on 6 August in Cologne.
Players from the NBA have to be additionally insured if they are called up for the national team. Last year, Dennis Schröder’s participation in the Olympic qualifiers in Split and the Summer Games in Tokyo failed because no insurance company wanted to insure the high salaries Schröder was aiming for in the NBA.
This year, a solution is to be found for all NBA professionals. “No player’s participation will fail because of insurance reasons,” Brenscheidt promised. In Schröder, Daniel Theis, Franz and Moritz Wagner, Maximilian Kleber and Isaac Bonga, no less than six players employed in the USA have declared their willingness to play for Germany this summer. “It will be a big task for our national coach to put the team together,” said Brenscheidt in view of other strong players under contract in Europe.