Jiří Welsch

Jiří Welsch
Player information
birthday	January 27, 1980
place of birth	Pardubice, Czechoslovakia
size	201 cm
position	Point forward
NBA draft	2002 , 16th pick Philadelphia 76ers
Club information
society	ČEZ Nymburk
league	NBL Czech Republic / VTB-UL
Jersey number	9
Clubs as active
1997–1998 BK Pardubice 1998–2000 Sparta Prague 2000–2002 KK Union Olimpija 2002–2003 Golden State Warriors 2003–2005 Boston Celtics 2005 Cleveland Cavaliers 2005–2006 Milwaukee Bucks 2006–2010 Unicaja Málaga 2010–2011 Asefa Estudiantes 2011–2012 Spirou BC Charleroi Since 2012, ČEZ Nymburk 00000 0
National team
Since 01998	Czech Republic

Jiří Welsch (born January 27, 1980 in Pardubice , Bohemia ) is a Czech basketball player . Welsch played, among other things, four seasons in the highest endowed professional league NBA in the United States and five seasons in the ACB league in Spain , which was considered the best national league in Europe at the time. Since 2012 he has been playing again in his home country for the local series champion ČEZ Nymburk.

Career

Start at home and Slovenia (until 2002)

Welsch moved in 1998 at the age of 18 from the basketball club in his place of birth, for which he had played since 1994, to the capital Prague to Sparta, with whom, however, he celebrated no particular success in the following two years. Sparta Prague was eliminated twice in the play-offs for the Czech championship in the first round of the best eight teams. In 2000 he got a contract in Slovenia with the top club Union Olimpija in the capital Ljubljana . At this club, which also competed in the highest European club competition ULEB Euroleague , he was able to draw permanent attention. With Union Olimpija he won the national double twice and in 2002 was named " MVP " of the Slovenian league. At the European level, they reached the quarter-finals in the ULEB Euroleague 2000/01 , where they only narrowly failed due to the eventual overall winner, children of Bologna . In the following year, in the preliminary round of the ULEB Euroleague 2001/02, the German representative Opel Skyliners was prevented from entering the round of the 16 best teams, in which, however, even in the “Greek” intermediate round group with three Greek teams, they had no chance and only did got another win in six games. In return, the first ever championship of the Adriatic Basketball Association was won at its premiere . Welsch, who is counted as a point forward with a height of over 2 meters due to his ball skill and game overview , was considered one of the greatest European talents at the time and was already , although he had never played in the US college league NCAA Selected in the first round of the 2002 NBA Draft in 16th position.

NBA in the United States (2002 to 2006)

Jiří Welsch throwing in the 2005 Bucks jersey

The Philadelphia 76ers, who had secured the rights to Welsch in the “ Entry Draft ” in 2002 , gave Welsch to the Golden State Warriors for two future “draft picks”. They used him in the NBA 2002/03 only in just under half of the season's games for an average of a good six minutes of playing time per game and passed him after a year in a multi-player swap with Antawn Jamison, among others, to the Dallas Mavericks , who gave him passed on to the Boston Celtics before the start of the season. In the Celtics, Welsch was used regularly and was part of the " Starting Five " in the majority of the NBA 2003/04 games . With almost 27 minutes playing time per game, he averaged a good nine points and almost four rebounds . The Celtics managed, although they only won 36 of 82 games of the season, still a place in the play-offs, where they remained in the first round without a win against the Indiana Pacers . In the following NBA 2004/05 season , Welsch's shares in the Celtics fell again and they stepped him in February 2005 to the Cleveland Cavaliers for a future draft pick. Despite a positive season record of 42 wins, the Cavaliers just barely missed a place in the play-offs. After the end of the season Welsch was again given up for a future draft pick to the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bucks reached the play-offs in the 2005/06 NBA with 40 wins this season, but only managed one win in the first round against the Detroit Pistons . Welsch was used almost 15 minutes per game in 58 games of the season. In the play-offs, his playing time fell to under four minutes per game and he was released from his contract at the end of the season.

ACB League in Spain (2006 to 2011)

For the 2006/07 season Welsch returned to Europe and got a contract in the ACB league with the Spanish champions Unicaja from Málaga , in which the final MVP Jorge Garbajosa had switched to the NBA. In the ULEB Euroleague 2006/07 they beat their national rivals FC Barcelona in the quarter-final play-offs and after a semi-final defeat against PBK CSKA Moscow they remained victorious in the game for third place against TAU Cerámica from the Basque Country . Otherwise, however, they disappointed in the ACB league against their national rivals and, as defending champions with a balanced season record, barely made it into the play-offs, in which they remained without a win in the first round against runner-up TAU Cerámica. In the 2007/08 season, again with a balanced season record, the play-offs were barely made, but this time they triumphed over the main round first Real Madrid . In the national semi-finals, however, they failed again at the eventual champions TAU Cerámica. Conversely, in the ULEB Euroleague 2007/08, they had already failed in the round of the 16 best teams when, in addition to CSKA Moscow , they had to give way to FC Barcelona with just one point difference in a direct comparison . In the Spanish cup competition Copa del Rey in 2009 they lost the final by just two points against champions TAU Cerámica. In the ULEB Euroleague 2008/09 they had only won two defeats in the preliminary group and left Olympiacos Piraeus and Maccabi Tel Aviv as group winners. In the round of the 16 best European teams, however, the premature end came again. In the national league, third in the main round, they created a favorable starting position for the play-offs, but in the semi-final series against eventual champions FC Barcelona they were eliminated from the title. In the ULEB Euroleague 2009/10 , the elimination in the round of the best 16 teams followed, when, among other things, they surprisingly lost twice against the Polish champions Asseco Prokom Gdynia . In the national championship they were able to defeat the then “freshly minted” ULEB Eurocup winner Power Electronics Valencia in the first play-off round, but in the semi-final series they were eliminated again against defending champions FC Barcelona. While Valencia played as the title winner in the Euroleague, Welsch and his new club Asefa Estudiantes from Madrid also competed in the second European club competition Eurocup for the first time in the 2010/11 season. Here they moved into the quarter-finals in the Eurocup 2010/11 , in which, however, they lost twice against the Croatian representative KK Cedevita . In the national championship 16 wins in 34 games were enough for Estudiantes only to twelfth place in the table in the ACB league.

Return home via Belgium (since 2011)

After five years in the ACB league, Welsch moved to the 2011/12 season in the Belgian Ethias League for the local series champion Spirou BC from Charleroi . At the qualifying tournament for the Euroleague at the beginning of the season, they defeated the German representative ALBA Berlin and in the final the Czech champion ČEZ Nymburk in front of a home crowd and thus secured a starting place in the highest European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2011/12 . In the preliminary round there were only two wins in ten games. The season also ended disappointingly in the national championship. For the first time in four years they lost the title in the final series in the decisive fifth game against Flemish rivals Telenet Ostend . After just one season, Welsch left the Belgian club and went back to his homeland to the local series champion ČEZ Basketball from Nymburk . In the first round of the Euroleague qualification this time Nymburk defeated the Belgian champions Ostend and Welsch was able to return the favor personally, but in the following qualifying round it was lost to Mapooro Cantù . Then Nymburk started again in the Eurocup, but in the Eurocup 2012/13 they only achieved one victory in the second group phase of the 16 best teams against the two later Spanish semi-finalists Valencia Basket Club and Gescrap Bilbao . In the national championship in 2013, the team was able to achieve the seventh national double in a row.

National team (since 1998)

With the Czech national team, Welsch was 19-year-old for the first time at the 1999 European basketball championship in a men's final. At the start, the team surprisingly defeated the renowned national teams of Lithuania and Greece in their first ever final round after separating from Slovakia . Despite the subsequent defeat against Germany , they came first in the group, but in the second round only three defeats followed and they finished eleventh in the end.

As a result, they regularly failed to qualify for the finals and it was not until the 2007 European Championship finals that they were again represented in the field of participants. In their own opening game, in which Welsch was the team's “ top scorer ” with 22 points , they lost just after extra time to vice-European champions Germany and this time either Lithuania or Turkey were unable to defeat. After three defeats, the tournament ended in 13th or 15th place in a cross-comparison.

Again it took six years and the increase in the field of participants at the European Championship finals to 24 teams before the Czechs qualified for a final round with their new NBA star Jan Veselý . In the preliminary round, they defeated Poland and Georgia , among others , at the European Championship finals in 2013 , but the final preliminary round defeat against Croatia sealed the renewed preliminary round.

Web links

Commons : Jiří Welsch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• archive.fiba.com: Players - Jiri WELSCH (CZE) - Overview of participation in FIBA tournaments ( English )
• BRESCIA, JIRI - Statistics on the websites of the ULEB (English)
• ACB.COM: J. Welsch - player profile on the websites of the League ACB ( Spanish )
• Jiri Welsch - player profile on NBA.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jiri Welsch NBA & ABA Stats. Basketball-Reference.com, accessed September 15, 2013 (English, NBA statistics).