To little fanfare, the list of players invited to the training camp list for Team Germany was released in advance of the 2010 FIBA World Championship, as the German Basketball Federation (DBB) today posted 16 names invited by Dirk Bauermann. See if you can figure out if anyone’s missing.
Steffen Hamann, Lucca Staiger (ALBA Berlin); Demond Greene (Larissa); Yassin Idbihi, Heiko Schaffartzik (New Yorker Phantoms Braunschweig); Robin Benzing, Per Guenther (ratiopharm Ulm); Philipp Schwethelm (Eisbären Bremerhaven); Chad Toepper (Albuquerque Thunderbirds); Konrad Wysocki (Turow Zgorzelec); Elias Harris (Gonzaga); Jan-Hendrik Jagla (Asseco Prokom); Johannes Strasser, Tim Ohlbrecht (Telekom Baskets Bonn); Tibor Pleiss (Brose Baskets Bamberg); and Christopher McNaughton (EWE Baskets Oldenburg). Plus, “on call” is Patrick Femerling (Antalya BSB).
That’s right: no Dirk Nowitzki, no Chris Kaman.
For now.
As David Hein of independent heinnews notes, “Bauermann and his coaching staff will welcome Nowitzki and Kaman to the team should they decide to return following the NBA season” and that “[Christopher] McNaughton is only an option if Nowitzki and Kaman do not decide to play in Turkey.”
As for the reaction from German basketball fandom, German-speakers will surely enjoy checking out the Schönen Dunk forum, where BiE’s poor homeboy Chad Töpper gets particularly lambasted. (Albuquerque, represent!)
