The victory of the German U17 team over Spain at the recent U17 World Championships may be only a result of a single game. However, it shows that the German Youth Basketball is currently really improving as this win was the first ever win of a German Youth team over Spain in an official FIBA/FIBA Europe competition since the introduction of the A and B Division system. What has changed in Dirk Nowitzki's country that the Youth Teams are improving dramatically and the number of high-class prospects is really growing?
Four years ago started the first ever NBBL season. The NBBL is a national U19 League regrouping the 32 best U19 teams in the country that are divided into 4 regional divisions. Before the NBBL existed, the German youth leagues were only regionally based with a multitude of different leagues and teams. Most of the teams had no real competition and easily won their respective regional division before seeing their first real games come in Spring with the regional championships were the best teams competed. This system was one of the reasons why young German players lacked the experience of close or tough games as nearly none of them ever cracked the rotations of the Bundesliga teams. With the introduction of the NBBL, all the teams previously dominating their local league had now competition of a national level. With only 4 regional divisions it was clear that the level would go up, but also the costs and the travel times would increase. While before 2006, the teams had to go at a maximum of +/- 100km to play their games, now there were trips up to 500km to do. This gives the teams not only a better competition but also prepares the players on the travel that they will encounter once they are professionals.
Additionally, the mediatisation of the NBBL League puts a lot more focus on the young players. Box-scores of every game, regular news reports on the best teams and local media coverage put the spotlights on the local talents. This also facilitated the job of the different National Team coaches in order to "find" the talent as they can follow their performances on the Internet. The league is also a popular success with regular season games attracting hundreds of fans and Playoffs bring up to 1000 spectators to certain gyms. The season is crowned by a Top4 event that draws national basketball media coverage and assembled more than 2000 fans over 2 days. The success of the NBBL League showed the German federation that this is the right way. Therefore, a JBBL (U16) and a WNBL (Girls U19) have been created in 2009 and the first seasons were a nice success. It will now be interesting how the top players of the JBBL develop during their years in the NBBL as they will be first generation to have fully gone through national competition for more than 4 seasons.
Christophe Ney is the author of European Prospects website.
Photo: FIBA.COM
