As you know, FIBA handed out four wild cards yesterday, and one of the naitons who received one was Germany. And of course when one mentions Germany and baasketball in one sentence one names comes to his mind, that of Dirk Nowitzki. the German NBA super-star stated that he will play for Germany NT in WC 2010.
Nowitzki was quoted by "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" after he was informed about the wild card Germany had received minutes before: "Super. This wild card gives us a great perspective for the coming years. I thank FIBA and look forward to the summer of 2010."
Germany NT coach Dirk Bauermann was very satified: "I will do everything with my team so that people will say after the World Championship that we deserved this wild card. For the development of our young players, this is incredibly important."
Germany Basketball Federaion President, Ingo Weiss was ecstatic and could not hide his joy, being interviewed by FIBA TV: “I was coming to Istanbul and was a little nervous, so many nations wanted a wild card, like 17. We got it. It’s really great. As you can see at the EuroBasket in Poland, we had a young team, a very good team."
“We’re happy to be there in Istanbul at the World Championship. We had a young team, the other teams were really surprised by what’s going on with Germany, saying ‘they’re changing a lot of things’. If we have the possibility of the next team of having Dirk (Nowitzki) and Chris (Kaman) and some other good guys from Germany, for sure we’ll have a good team. Now, we can start preparing. By the beginning of August, you can start to see who is in the team.”
“Basketball in Germany is growing up, now that we have a wild card, it’s unbelievable. We’re sure of being at the next European Championship in 2011 in Lithuania. We have this wild card for Turkey in the World Championship and now we can work with basketball. We can go in the gym and start practicing to bring a good team to Turkey. If you don’t go to the World Championship, you almost go into a hole.”
“It’s also possible now to have a European Championship in Germany. In 1993 is when we had the last. Germany is for sure a football country, but also a good basketball country.”
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