By Michalis Gioulenoglou/ info@eurohoops.net
Latvia, Riga – Alan Ibrahimagic entered the tournament as an assistant coach, and due to the medical condition of German national team coach Alex Mumbru, who became the second person to win the Eurobasket as a player and as a coach after Greek legend Panagiotis Giannakis, Ibrahimagic ended up being practically the head coach of the champions.
“Due to unfortunate circumstances, I had to coach the team”, said Ibrahimagic modestly, adding that “Alex Mumbru is the coach of the team and he is coaching it, but for me it’s a great honor to be part of this group”.
“F.. that!” was the reaction of Dennis Schroder, who was sitting next to him. The MVP of the tournament sealed the ears of his son, who was on his lap, and added: “Shout out to Alan, what he did was not easy. Alex is the head coach, but what Alan did coaching us was incredible, we went 9-0, and that’s a hell of a coaching staff”.
However, for coach Ibrahimagic is all about the team: “This is the quality of this team, it’s talented, but even more it also has great people, great characters, great fighters that never give up, so we were never in panic, or nervous because we knew that in the crunch time, we had our captain, we had Andy (Obst), we had Bonga, who ever was on the court, would take the right decisions. Daniel (Theis) hit his only shot in crunch time, so this says everything about these people”.
So what this means for him on a personal level to coach the German “golden generation” to actual Eurobasket gold: “I am glad as a youth coach who is fighting for young players in Germany. We have a lot of talent coming up, and I hope they get more opportunities to play in our top league. That’s the mission of Dennis and this generation, to bring more people to basketball, bring more interest to basketball, so Germany can develop even better. So it’s also about bringing something to the country, and I hope we have done it a bit this time, and this will show in the future”.