The Basketball Bundesliga continues to lose its best young players to the US college. The league faces a tear test.
Alan Ibrahimagic is one of the protagonists of the current success era in German basketball. At the European Championship, Ibrahimagic, as an assistant coach, represented the sick national coach Alex Mumbru and led the DBB team to the title.
Only a few weeks before the triumph of Riga, Ibrahimagic, who had been a coach for the offspring for years, had been responsible for the youngsters for years, with the U19 juniors at the World Cup, there they had to surrender to the United States. A year earlier, Ibrahimagic won the European championship title with the U18 juniors. With the mostly identical squad, led by playmaker Christian Anderson.
BBL loses more and more talents
The 19-year-old, who also made his debut at the A-National team in summer, is one of those talents who stand for a promising future of German basketball. But also for a problem that the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) drives more than ever before the start of the season: Because many of the German talents are no longer active in the BBL, but in the USA, on college. The Supreme Court had made a pioneering decision in 2021: The highest US court allowed college players who had previously been tied to strict amateur status to market their personal rights themselves and so-called “Nil deals” (“name, image, lienness”).
Collegestar Cooper Flagg – $ 28 million with NIL income
Since then, significantly more money has been in the US system. The large college programs, which were previously at least officially part of a university education, are now more and more acting like real professional teams: they conclude contracts with shorter terms, pay transfer fees for top talents. The players, on the other hand, bring the chance to market themselves in extremely popular college sport, quickly revenue in the six-figure area, or even beyond: Cooper Flag, top pick in the past draft,, according to US media reports, should only have collected $ 28 million with Nile marketing last year.
Fru, Steinbach, Kharchenkov – “Exodus” on talents in the BBL
The promise to dollar million also attracts more and more German talents, which are more likely to get salaries in the five-digit range in the BBL. BBL managing director Stefan Holz already speaks of one “real exodus “ Talents that apparently continues: with Sananda Fru (Braunschweig), Hannes Steinbach (Würzburg) and Johann Grünloh (Vechta), the three best U22 players of the past BBL season have all switched to a US college. Alba Berlin had to go with Amon Dörries (in the future Bucknell University) and Elias Rapieque (Kansas State) Let two top talents steep. The industry leader FC Bayern was also unable to hold its U18 European champion Ivan Kharchenkov.
From FC Bayern to College – Ivan Kharchenkov
Some club managers already see a tear test for the Bundesliga. The numerous departures of German talents could lead to the fact that the 6-plus-6 rate could come under pressure, according to the fear of league boss Holz in the magazine “Big”. The rule that six out of twelve players in the squad have to have a German passport had recently mentioned European champion coach Ibrahimagic as the basis for the current success of the national team. However, if the BBL clubs lose the best German players from their own young programs, it could become more and more difficult to meet the quota in the future.
Clubs focus on cooperation – and hope to Fiba regulation
Economically, the BBL clubs lack the means of stopping the emigration of their talents. Clubs like Alba Berlin and Rasta Vechta therefore focus on cooperation, they advise and support players, for example in the selection of a good college program. Also in the hope that in return you participate in the rich US revenue as a kind of training compensation.
The Lithuanian top club Zalgiris Kaunas drives the strategy to agree with players who switch to US college, proportionate commission payments and a preference right in future negotiations, you should at some point switch back to Europe. In the Bundesliga, Würzburg plans to accept the contracts for change to college, according to a “Big” report.
These requirements are legally binding for the collegeliga NCAA but not. Marco Baldi, Managing Director of Alba Berlin, therefore sees the Fiba Basketball Association. “The NCAA and the colleges act outside the Fiba cosmos. If one of our players wants to switch to college, then he doesn’t even need to release from the Fiba.” A regulation in which the clubs that invest in young talent is needed. This system must also include the US colleges, so Baldi: “Otherwise it is completely wild west.”