Suddenly everything is open again. Bayern’s basketball players have fought their way back into the final series. Now they want to ensure the equaliser on Sunday. For Alba, the burden of expectation was too great.
On Saturday, Alba Berlin’s basketball players went on the road again. However, not with the championship trophy in their luggage to celebrate somewhere on a Spanish party island, but to Munich. Because that’s where the fourth play-off final of the Basketball Bundesliga will take place on Sunday, after Bayern proved to be a party crasher in Berlin on Friday and cut the series to 1:2. Instead of championship rapture, there was a little bit of shock in the arena at Ostbahnhof. “They kicked our butts,” said Berlin’s Luke Sikma.
The big question now is how both teams will react to Bayern’s completely surprising 90:60 win in Berlin. Actually, everyone had firmly assumed that Alba would clinch their third German championship in a row with their 20th win in a row on Friday. The defending champions had always been too dominant in the last few games, and the Bavarians, who were shorthanded, looked too battered.
But then the Berliners had a bad day, while the Munich team, with the feeling that they had nothing to lose, played their best game in this year’s playoffs. “You can make mistakes, but you must never give up. That was the best answer you can give today,” said a proud Bayern coach Andrea Trinchieri. “The game shows the culture of our team and the whole organisation,” the Italian said.
The Munich team had been very upset by how much all the talk and writing in the run-up to the third game had been about Berlin’s upcoming championship binge. The star ensemble from the Isar did not want to say goodbye to the season with a sweep, i.e. a defeat in three games. “You could smell it: Everything was ready for the title party. Nobody in the BBL expected us to win here today,” Trinchieri said.
Trinchieri to the honour
In the run-up to the game, the coach had therefore no longer discussed any basketball-specific matters, but simply appealed to the pride and honour of his players. With success. Right from the start, the Bavarians were in full force and gave the Berliners, who seemed paralysed, an object lesson. “Everything was against us, but we managed to show character,” said captain Nihad Djedovic.
That’s what it will be all about now for Alba after the home defeat. “The result doesn’t matter. What does matter is how you react to it,” Alba general manager Marco Baldi said. “The big game that everything was set for, we lost that. That’s when you have to look to get it out of your system right away.”
The Bavarians, on the other hand, who returned to Munich by plane immediately after the end of the game on Friday evening, are regaining hope. Managing director Marko Pesic euphorically high-fived Bayern president Herbert Hainer after the win. “That was really strong today,” said Pesic. “Now we have to regenerate and build on that on Sunday. “
