After having successfully integrated Chris Kaman to the German national team after his German background was discovered by Five magazine, German media market competitor BASKET came up with a story about current Portland Trailblazer Joel Przybilla in which the Minnesota native tells readers that he has, besides his already-known Polish roots, a link to Germany through his mother.

This gives Przybilla the opportunity to play for either nation in the upcoming Eurobasket should its federation goes for a possible nationalization process. The question remains if Germany is interested in doing so, however, as the current national team coach announced in a recent press conference that the core of the new national team would be built around young guys like Steffen Hamann, Joe Herber, Philip Zwiener, Konrad Wysocki, Jan Jagla, Sven Schultze, Tim Ohlbrecht, Gordon Geib, Heiko Schaffartzik, Dominik Bahiense de Mello and Philipp Schwethelm.

Additionally, he will try to integrate the promising ’88-89 generation around Elias Harris, Robin Benzing, Tibor Pleiss and Lucca Staiger as soon as this summer. So I don’t know if bringing in another NBA player would be that helpful for the younger ones of these players.

Anyhow, if the Germans need other players, they should also consider guys like Luke Schenscher (son of German migrants, according to Wikipedia); Drake and Travis Diener (with such a name, a German family line should be easy to detect); Donté Greene (born in Munich and holding German citizenship according to himself); Carlos Boozer (born in Aschaffenburg, Germany); Shaquille O’Neal (who played basketball for the Fulda American High School in Germany, and whose stepfather was based in the country); or even Elvis Presley (who was posted in Friedberg during his military service).

Unfortunately, this last is dead (or not?) and was not considered a high-quality prospect, anyway.

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