Football team

Bonn Telekom Baskets

Club · Germany · BBL

«Baskets Bonn»

284 Matches

174 wins

110 losses

24159–22932 Points

+1227 Difference

85.1 Average per match

Form L W L L L W

Bonn had never lifted the German championship when a team built around T.J. Shorts went to the Basketball Champions League final in 2023 and beat Hapoel Jerusalem. Shorts took the Final Four MVP award, and Baskets Bonn became the first German club to hold the trophy.

The club did not start out as Baskets Bonn at all. It grew out of a 1992 merger of the basketball sections of Godesberger TV and SC Fortuna Bonn, and only took its present legal name, Telekom Baskets Bonn e.V., in March 1995.

Domestically, the record reads as a long string of near-misses: six BBL final defeats, in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2008, 2009 and 2023, and three lost Cup finals besides. The European title arrived instead, and weeks later Bonn were within a point of a second prize, falling 70-69 to Sesi Franca in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup final.

Since 2008 the team has played at the Telekom Dome, built for 6,000 and named, like the club itself, after its sponsor; the arena replaced the old Hardtberghalle. On the Rhine, the fixture that matters most is against RheinEnergie Köln, played out as the Rhein-Derby.

Bonn's academy has fed the first team steadily, with Jonas Wohlfarth-Bottermann and Kostja Mushidi among the graduates to come through it, work done in cooperation with Dragons Rhöndorf. Parker Jackson-Cartwright added another individual honour in 2022, when he was named BBL MVP.

The German championship itself, chased across six finals since 1997, still has not come to Bonn.

Latest results

All matches

19 Sep	BBL	Hamburg Towers H	96:72	W
4 Jun	BBL	Bayern Munich H	57:77	L
1 Jun	BBL	Bayern Munich A	69:91	L
30 May	BBL	Bayern Munich A	78:83	L
27 May	BBL	Wurzburg H	66:63	W
24 May	BBL	Wurzburg A	70:82	L