Thursday, 13.07.2006	posted by Sven Simon 4:52 pm
Category: FIBA World Championship

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GOOD BYE FOOTBALL, HELLO BASKETBALL

Guten Tag Everybody,

finally the great football world championship in Germany is history. Wonderful time... but the loss in the semis still hurts (still believe it was written in the stars, that Germany gets his fourth star).

But... let's talk Bball! My first lines... of course... about my own team.

On thursday the german national team left from Frankfurt to Mallorca for the first practice camp. The day before we had a fotoshooting for our magazine with some of the players. The team manager gave us the bag with the official national jerseys. As I searched for the jerseys we needed, I found a surprise. A jersey with the name "Sensley". I asked the media director and he took the jersey quickly out of my hands. "This is not for you."

Too late! Calling my girlfriend Nicole at home and google the name took less than a minute. That's what she found:

http://starbulletin.com/2006/06/27/sports/story01.html

http://starbulletin.com/2006/05/25/sports/story03.html

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Mar/07/sp/FP603070337.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/player/profile?playerId=15331

http://www.nba.com/draft2002/profiles/julian_sensley.html

And here are two videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu6Cr0TfA2c&search=julian%20sensley 

Video 2

And now the news is already out: Julian Sensley, Senior from Division 1 College Hawaii Warriors got a german passport because his mother is german. He will practice with the team to get a spot an the roster for the WC in Japan.

By the way: it's not that easy for Sensley. We have nine players from the silver-team from Belgrad (Pascal Roller, Mithat Demirel, Robert Garrett, Denis Wucherer, Demond Greene, Sven Schultze, Nowitzki, Patrick Femerling and Robert Maras) plus Okulaja and Guard Steffen Hamann (both back from injurys and in shape). And the youngsters Jan Jagla, Guido Grunheid, Joe Herber from West Virginia and Christopher McNaughton from Bucknell University.

That's all we know for sure right now, but the critics are already going wild. Although the german Bball Community is talking with passion about Sensley: I will (and we all should) wait at first to see Sensley play and talk to him.

Then we can judge about...

1. a forward rotation with Dirk Nowitzki, Ademola Okulaja and him.

2. the problems, that maybe comes along with a guy, who joins a group of players, who know each other so long and have developed friendships.

3. the whole topic of crushing the motivation of the young talents in the country, because of the naturalization of a player, who never lived or played in Germany (I don't buy it!).

4. the possibility that Sensley is only searching for a way to jump start his NBA career, like I read in some critical internet-threads (Keep in mind: assistant coach and former national player Chris Welp visited Sensley, talked to him and watched him play. Do you trust Chris? Yep, me too - since his freethrows against Russia in the EC-Final in 1993).

5. and the fact, that Sensley speaks no german language (not a big deal, because most of the time - like during timeouts - headcoach Dirk Bauermann speaks englisch anyways).

I'm pretty sure, that Bauermann & Co thought about all these aspects much longer than we did. So... relax.

Okay, that's it for now. Excuse me... once again your question, please... I couldn't understand you. Ahh, you wanna now about my predictions for the world cup. It is a little bit early, but... for today my feeling is: the USA gonna win. Not because I like them, but because I have a long tradition to go with the underdog!

spiele hart, spiele smart, lies FIVE (www.fivemag.de), rät der sven.