In the house of the Skyliners

Today afternoon, after almost three years in Frankfurt, I have watched my first basketball game of the Frankfurt (now Fraport) Skyliners. I did not know that the former strong team from Frankfurt was this year fighting against relegation, so I was quite pessimistic about the outcome of the game.

Before discussing the game in itself, I must say first that the atmosphere in the arena was very nice and sportive, there were hardly any complaints about the referees and everybody was concentrated in supporting their team (not on insulting or provoking the others). It has reminded me of the atmosphere in NBA games, especially the presentation of the players (see picture below), which was 100% American style. Nothing to do with the violence in Greece or Turkey, for example.

My expectations in terms of basketball were not very high because I have often watched some games of the German bastketball league on the TV and, let's say it in a polite way, I perceive a lot of room for improvement in the way the game is understood. Most often a guard takes the ball, shoots a 3-pointer, misses it, another guard takes the rebound, runs to the other court, shoots a 3-pointer and so on and so forth. But the game today was totally the contrary. As you can see from the statistics of the game (http://www.beko-bbl.de/remotecontent/deliver.php?menuid=1198&saisonx=&spiel_id=13455&spieltag=7&topmenu=3&wettbewerb=1&xget=%2Fbeko-bbl%2Fstatistik%2Fspiel%2Findex.php), 3-pointers were hardly tried and, instead, what I have watched is a very intense, passionate and hard basketball game.

I have been also positively surprised by the attendance to the game: almost 5,000 people. In Spain we are very proud of the attendance to our league, which is currently the most powerful in Europe by far, but 5,000 people in a game of the German league is a lot: they do not achieve this attendance in the top games in Greece, Italy, Russia,... In addition, the German competition has 18 teams, what shows that it is financially sound and there is demand for basketball in Germany. On the other side, just to contrast, the Spanish league was reduced this season to 16 teams due to the financial problems of some of the participants.

To sum up, I now feel a bit sad that my first game of the Frankfurt Skyliners is just one month before leaving Frankfurt. It is also remarkable the quantum leap of the German league, which is now looking much better than before and which in few years be the second league in Europe.