FC Bayern Munich guard Andreas Obst has come a long way to become one of the best three-point shooters in Europe.
Andreas Obst, Bayern: 'You have to have fun in basketball'
Interviews
7 Mins read
The road to the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague for Obst was different than for most. Growing up in the town of Halle in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt region, Obst was not exposed to much basketball. And when he played, there were few role models at the highest levels.
“When I was a kid, I started sports with soccer and swimming. But I didn't have that much fun,” Obst recalled. “There was a school where you can play basketball a little bit and I enjoyed it. My mom used to play basketball too a little bit when she was younger. And she brought me to a club and I tried it for a couple of weeks and it was very much fun. I stuck to it and I played more and more basketball and over the years I became a little bit better.”
"You have good days, you have bad days, but these bad days lead somewhere to having better days and you have to enjoy the whole process."
Obst credited the coaches he had at the youth levels for teaching him the proper shooting fundamentals from which his now picture-perfect form developed. But aside from that, the practices in Halle were not like those other high-level teenage hopefuls enjoyed.
“We had practice like three times a week. But it was not like practice-practice. It was like, okay let's see how many people are coming. Maybe we are 10, maybe we can play five-on-five. But mostly we were like just seven or eight and played three-on-three or four-on-four. It was just a little bit like fun, joking around a bit, but after a while, I was a little bit annoyed by it,” Obst summed up. “I tried to do a little bit by myself somehow but it wasn't too much because the possibilities weren't that good there my hometown.”
One place Obst was able to put in extra work was at his grandparents’ house, where there was a hoop. Nevertheless, as Obst learned, there is a time and place for practicing. And a time and place for rest. Even at your grandparents’ house.
“You have to take care when to shoot, when to not. They were living in a village and on Sundays between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. it's like siesta. They're sleeping and resting a bit. So when I was starting dribbling and shooting, my grandfather came and said ‘hey, hey. Stop, stop. Because now it’s a rest, so everything has to be quiet.' I said ‘okay, okay.’ But as soon as it was 3 p.m., I was outside shooting again.”
As Obst’s basketball dreams grew, he outgrew the setup in Halle. Then, when he was 15, he got a chance to try out for the youth team at Brose Bamberg.
“They saw me and asked me for a practice to show my talent. And they wanted me there and I joined them and it was a lot of practice, a lot of work, extra hours this and that. It was real intense for me, but I guess it worked out,” Obst said.
Bamberg was some 250 kilometers from home – or two and a half hours by train. Obst was suddenly living on his own, coming home only for Christmas and in the summer.
“I really realized that I was going to be in a professional club, to practice, to really work on it, to maybe get to the professional point, when I was in the car in my hometown with my mother to go to Bamberg,” he recalled. “I was like 'shoot, I might never come back to my hometown.' It was really tough to realize for me. Over the years I've thought about it and it was a nice experience for me. And it wasn't easy for me and my family because we're a very close family.”
The distance meant that his family only got to see him play a few times a year. Not only was the distance difficult for him, but especially for his mother: “It's never easy to see your son leaving at 15. Maybe at 18-19, when he's older and annoying a little bit,” Obst joked. “But 15 is a little too early.”
Even though he was trading in his childhood for a shot at basketball stardom, Obst’s dreams were not sky high when he started with Bamberg.
“For me at first it was just to improve, be better at basketball. I never expected to be in European competitions like [the EuroLeague]. I thought maybe I’ll go to the first league,” he recalled. “That I made it now is really nice for me. It means a lot.”
Looking back at all the hurdles he overcame to get where he is, Obst is pleased. One of the main reasons for his success is that he loves the game. However, he cautions that leaving home at an early age might not be the right call for someone who doesn’t want to put in the work.
“You have to be really sure about it... What I always say about basketball is you have to enjoy it,” Obst said. “You have to have fun in basketball. If you don't have fun, if you don’t enjoy the process, enjoy playing basketball, enjoy also somehow the grind. You have good days, you have bad days, but these bad days lead somewhere to having better days and you have to enjoy the whole process somehow. And if you don’t have fun, it’s tough always.”
Obst immersed himself in basketball in Bamberg and developed into one of the top players his age in Germany. He became a regular on the German junior national teams and part of Bamberg’s senior team’s rotation as a teenager. Next came a season with Rockets Gotha before he went abroad and played for Obradorio in Spain.
In August 2019, local television broadcaster MDR Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk produced a three-part docu-series on Obst, whom it called “the best basketball player that Saxony-Anhalt has ever produced.” The series, “Plan A”, followed Obst during the 2018-19 season, which he spent with Obradorio, and at the 2019 Basketball World Cup in China.
“A journalist from close to my hometown, also a basketball fan, wrote some newspaper articles about me and once he came to me and said, ‘hey what about doing a short documentary about you going to Spain and to the World Cup?’ Obst explained. “It was cool. It's quite nice to see now because it's two or three years ago now and to the point I was there and now where I'm at now. It's really nice to see. It was a fun experience for sure.”
Obst returned to Germany in 2019 when he signed a two-year deal with ratiopharm Ulm and he proceeded to shoot the lights out in the EuroCup. That led to Bayern snapping him up to debut in the EuroLeague this season. He has by far surpassed the dreams he had as a teenager and now Obst’s goals are about the team.
“I want to be successful with the team. That's the most important thing for us after last season, which was very successful and historic for German basketball,” he said. “I want to play at a high level and compete. I want to learn a lot and enjoy it.”
Fans in Munich certainly hope the 25-year-old Obst continues to enjoy playing the game and making clutch threes for Bayern for years to come.