Baskets: What Denis Wucherer can expect

With the game in Crailsheim, basketball Bundesliga team s.Oliver Würzburg starts the new season this Saturday (6 p.m.). After a difficult year in which the minimum goals of survival as a club and relegation were achieved, things should now look up again. A conversation with coach Denis Wucherer about new goals, German and foreign coaches and his possible future.

Question: How satisfied are you with the preparation, in which you only lost two out of ten friendly matches?

Denis Usurer: These test games are always a bit difficult to evaluate. If, for example, like we did last weekend at our two-part dress rehearsal in Ludwigsburg and against Heidelberg, you have two tests within 24 hours, one week before the start of the season, then of course you don’t play full throttle for eight quarters. In Ulm, too, we didn’t necessarily coach in such a way that we really wanted to win it. In preparation, it is very good not to win a game (he grins). But we have the feeling that we can play against sensible Bundesliga teams and act on a similar level. This and the fact that all players will be healthy for the first game ensures that we can be satisfied with the first five or six weeks.

Sounds at least a little more optimistic than you sounded more often in the previous round, in which you questioned or had to question your team’s suitability for the Bundesliga more than once. . .

Wucherer: Today we have more quality individually. Especially in key positions such as in development. And those who help out on the set-up position, i.e. players who are supposed to make decisions, have more game intelligence. I hope we will be a little more stable and smarter too. We also wanted to have more experience. For example our point guard. If you have a national player from Uruguay who has been quite successful in his mischief in Brazil, and the Brazilian league is not a bad one now, we were relatively certain that Luciano Parodi could also function in the Bundesliga. Unfortunately, he was absent for three and a half weeks due to an injury and was only able to train properly for the last ten or 14 days. Of course, he lacks the preparation a bit, and the rest of the team has to adjust to him even better. That will take a little more time. But it will be fine. Hopefully.

After a year and a half break, spectators are now allowed to enter the hall again. How much are you looking forward to it?

Wucherer: I am curious how it will be. I think there were 1,000 people in the hall last time we played our test match in Ulm. Even if 6800 fit in – the 1000 were already relatively loud. With drums and chants and everything. That was good. But we have to get used to that again. I am curious how we will deal with it.

Their opening game in Crailsheim is also a duel between the only two native German coaches in the Bundesliga. How do you assess the development that fewer and fewer local coaches are finding jobs in the league?

Wucherer: Of course, the development is going in the completely wrong direction. When I got promoted with Gießen in 2015, we were nine Germans out of 18 coaches. Now it’s two out of 18, okay, if you look closely: Oldenburg’s Mladen Drijencic also has a German passport, so we’re three out of 18. What is even worse is that many of the German coaches who once existed in the Bundesliga , kind of fizzled out. It’s not like they’re on hold waiting to come back. It’s kind of a German phenomenon that German coaches suddenly disappear completely from the scene.

And what can the coaches from Holland, Finland or Spain do better than the German ones?

Wucherer: I have no real explanation for why it is the way it is. They are often good coaches too, I have great respect for my colleagues from Holland, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Spain and so on. You have one advantage over the young German coaches: You once had the opportunity to work at the highest level in your home country and to show that you can do it. And German coaches don’t have this chance. That is the big difference.

In other basketball countries it looks very different.

Wucherer: Even in the ProA, our second division, the rate for German coaches is still negative. It only becomes positive in the ProB, and even there only barely. If you look at Spain, France or Italy, i.e. in comparable leagues to the BBL, then the rate is exactly the other way around compared to Germany. With 18 teams there are 14, 15 local coaches. It’s just a completely different mentality. That doesn’t mean that Italian or French coaches are better than the German ones. As a player, I’ve seen six or seven coaches in Italy myself. I can say: We can do that too. But there is a different self-image there, and pride also plays a role. The decision-makers in the clubs simply do not rely on German coaches. It’s a culture that has developed over the past 20 years. Last year I said: If someday a Dane comes along or someone from Luxembourg, then I’ll stop (he grins).

This attitude does not only exist in the clubs: With Gordon Herbert, the German Basketball Association has now signed a Canadian as the new national coach and successor to Henrik Rödl, who at least has qualified for the Olympics and then also in Tokyo with the national team surprised – and yet was not allowed to continue.

Wucherer: In principle, Herbert is first of all a good coach. He did a good job at the BBL. I played for him for half a season in Frankfurt, so I know him very well. He became German champion with Frankfurt. He knows the league. He is an absolute specialist. In Berlin it didn’t work out that way at some point (Anmerk. d. Red: Berlin failed with trainer Herbert, who began his Bundesliga career in Würzburg, in the play-off quarter-finals at the Baskets in 2012, and later in France, too. I am sure that there would have been enough interesting candidates in Germany, especially in the program in which trainers for the BBL and DBB are to be developed. But it is always a question of direction: How medium-term or how long-term is the whole thing planned? How important is the home European championship next year? How much pressure is there?

You too could have been a candidate, you have already worked for the DBB, and your contract in Würzburg expires at the end of the season, and now a solution could certainly have been found. . .

Wucherer: I don’t know if I was on any lists there. Yes, I was assistant coach of the national team under Dirk Bauermann at the European Championships in Poland and at the World Cup in Turkey, and as head coach I looked after the U20 and A2. That was how I started my coaching career. Of course, I still dream of coaching in the Euro League one day, but with the eagle on my chest. . . I’ve played in the shirt 123 times. . . To coach the store, especially with the potential that we currently have in terms of talent, Euro-League and NBA players. . . You can always play a good role in that. Henrik Rödl recently showed what is possible with this team.

Back to Würzburg. A year and a half ago you set your personal goal as wanting to leave a footprint with your employers. You were in Giessen for four years, if you complete the upcoming season, it would be four years here too. Could you imagine staying longer, especially after the more or less lost year due to the pandemic?

Wucherer: It’s also a question of whether the club wants that. A lot came up last year, otherwise we might have sat down at the time, at least if I interpreted the signals correctly. Of course, it also depends on how the first six or eight weeks will go now. If it gets more difficult again from the start, then you shouldn’t be surprised if such a conversation doesn’t take place at first. But we are back to the topic again: There are three jobs for a German in the Bundesliga, one of which I have. I’m very happy about that. And accordingly I would of course be very happy if I could continue here in Würzburg.

That sounds as if, after a difficult last year with severe cuts in the budget, you now see prospects in Würzburg again.

Wucherer: The first two years were really fun, there was a lot of steam in there, also with regard to the new hall. Now we’re repositioning ourselves a little after a very, very difficult year. We, my son and I, feel extremely at home here in Würzburg. And the sporting environment also fits very well, with the training center, the daily work, the relationship with Steffen (Anmerk. d.  Red: Managing Director Liebler) and his team fit in very well. That is fun. And if something is good and fun, then of course it’s always an option – if the club so wishes – to continue working together here for over four years. The last year and a half were really not planned like this. And last year in particular, the footprint didn’t really get any bigger (he grins). I hope that we can now build on the first two years a little.

What is the official season goal? Two years ago it was said: We want to play for the play-offs. Before the last round it was all about survival, including sport.

Wucherer: We want to orient ourselves towards midfield again, preferably with a view upwards. It will not be easy to build on the first two years. The first six places are always somehow assigned to the usual suspects, which of course also has to do with the budget. On the other hand, there is always room for a surprise team on seven and eight. Even if we would like to be one of the surprise teams – ultimately everything between seventh and twelfth places would be perfectly okay. If that works, then we’ve all done a good job. But there is a lot of work ahead of us.

Are you worried that the miserable last impression of the last round, which you finished in sixteenth, especially the last three games, stuck with the fans?

Wucherer: I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I completely suppressed that (he grins like a rascal). Seriously: These appearances weren’t really a surprise for us, we saw the players in training. Since, at the latest, after the relegation had been confirmed, nothing more. Nothing got there either. In this respect: sponge over it. This year we would like to be a team with the fans behind us that first has to be beaten at home. Also from the good and financially very strong clubs. And that is only possible through mood, passion and emotions. But like every year: The team first has to play its way into the hearts of the fans. It doesn’t come by itself. We have an obligation to deliver. In the hope that we have a team with which the fans and spectators can identify. And then we will hopefully play a season together that we will fondly remember.