Before the season, Justus Hollatz moved to the Euroleague to Anadolu Efes Istanbul. He came as a freshly crowned world champion. Now the national player spoke about winning the title, captain Dennis Schröder and the team chemistry.
As one of twelve German national players, Justus Hollatz had made the journey to the Basketball World Cup in Japan and the Philippines in August. About a month ago, he came back home as a world champion. “To be so young and already celebrate such a success, to be world champion – it doesn’t feel real,” he said in an interview with the Turkish “S Sport”. “Everything fell into place.”
The German guard played in six games at the World Cup, although he had injured his foot during the preparation. In the team hierarchy, other players are ahead of the Hamburg native, but Hollatz is a man of the future – who will now also gain experience at the highest European level.
Due to his transfer to Anadolu Efes Istanbul, the 22-year-old will now be playing in the Euroleague. He played in his team’s 80:103 win over defending champions Real Madrid on Thursday night (9:25 minutes, three points, two assists). “I watched a lot of Efes games and looked up to players like Shane Larkin or Tibor Pleiss,” says Hollatz, who now plays alongside both the US star and the German centre – both two-time Euroleague winners. “I’m happy that I got this chance. “
Even though Efes is facing upheaval after the recent era of success and the departure of coach Ergin Ataman (now Panathinaikos Athens), he has been able to settle in well, Hollatz said. “It seems to be a fun squad, there is a lot of laughter. I don’t know all the inside jokes yet, but I will try to understand them.”
The past few months in the German national team have shown how important good team chemistry is, after all, on and off the court. “Everything fit,” says Hollatz, who was already a member of the bronze team at last year’s home European Championships.
That the structure of the DBB selection was extraordinarily resilient was shown above all by the way it dealt with the public dispute during a time-out in the Slovenia game between Dennis Schröder and Daniel Theis and the subsequent altercation between national coach Gordon Herbert and Schröder. There was no negative impact on the game or the tournament. “The coach said from day one that we would have a conflict at some point,” Hollatz said. At the same time, however, Herbert had explained that this dispute had to be solved as a team – which worked out well: Schröder and Theis had already reconciled during the game, and Herbert later apologised to Schröder.
The NBA star later blamed that apology for the title win and his own personal top performance. Schröder led the team to the final as the best player of the World Cup. “He’s that one guy,” Hollatz raved about his fellow guard. “He plays at an unbelievable level, especially at the FIBA level. He was the one who told us from the beginning that we wanted to win gold. “
