Luke Sikma was sitting on the bench in sweatpants and a warm-up shirt, exchanging ideas with assistant coach Sebastian Trzcionka and looking extremely relaxed. The first quarter passed, then the second, but the impression that Alba Berlin’s captain would not be able to take part in this game at some point did not. Two days after beating the top Euroleague team Olimpia Milan, coach Israel Gonzalez relied on load control, as it is called in modern sports jargon. In addition to Sikma, who was at least in the squad, playmaker Maodo Lo and three-man specialist Marcus Eriksson also paused in the home game against the Niners Chemnitz on Sunday.
To spare the three most important professionals together, and that in a duel with the surprise team of the season, was definitely a risk. After all, Chemnitz entered the game with the same record of five wins and three defeats and a few weeks ago had knocked Bayern Munich out of the cup. But the experiment succeeded. After a balanced first half, Alba turned up after the break. In front of a maximum of 2500 spectators, including about half from Chemnitz, the Berliners won 83:62 (17:12, 16:20, 31:14, 19:16) and celebrated their fourth victory in a row across all competitions.
The best throwers at Alba were Johannes Thiemann (14 points), Tim Schneider (13), Yovel Zoosmann (12) and Louis Olinde (12). “The fact that we can beat a good team like Chemnitz, although three important players are missing, shows how good we are as a team,” said Olinde. Jonas Mattisseck was also very happy after a “great basketball evening”. “It ffeels like a full hall, “said the guard about the mood duel between the two fan camps.
Alba started the game well despite the unusual starting lineup and that had mainly to do with Thiemann. The national player took on the role of Sikma, at least as far as is possible with such a unique all-rounder. After a few minutes, Thiemann had hit three sometimes difficult throws and distributed a nice assist. Alba took an easy lead from the middle of the first quarter and if the three-man quota with one goal in eight attempts hadn’t been pretty miserable, the encounter would probably have become very clear very early on.
Source From: Tagesspiegel
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