Karim Aw

Karim Aw
Player information
Full name	Karim Oumar Pierre Aw
birthday	June 16, 1965
place of birth	Paris, France
size	204 cm
position	Center / Power Forward
Clubs as active
1986–1990 MTSV Schwabing 1990–1993 TSV Dachau Spurs 1993–1994 TG Landshut 1994–1996 SV Oberelchingen 1996–1999 BG Ludwigsburg 1999–2006 Falke Nürnberg 2006 TSV Herzogenaurach Longhorns 2006–2009 Crailsheim Merlins 2009–2012 hapa Ansbach Piranhas 00000

Karim Oumar Pierre Aw (born June 16, 1965 in Paris ) is a former Senegalese - German basketball player . Aw began to play the sport professionally late and played in the 2nd basketball league south from 1993 before playing in the top German division basketball league for SV Oberelchingen and BG Ludwigsburg. At the older age of 40, he was promoted to the basketball Bundesliga again in 2005/06 with the second division club DJK Falke Nürnberg . After this further first division season Aw played until 2012 for the second division club Crailsheim Merlins and the regional division Ansbach Piranhas in higher divisions.

Career

Born in France , Aw spent his childhood in Senegal , where he was passionate about football and played as a goalkeeper . At the end of his puberty, he said he grew several centimeters per year between the ages of 16 and 19 and was finally discovered for the sport of basketball. It was not until the age of 21 that he started exercising in the club in the lowest divisions at MTSV Schwabing, the first post-war championship for men. In 1990, the Schwabing coach Florian Kröpelin became the coach of the regional league team TSV Dachau in what was then the third-highest German division and also guided Aw to the suburb club. First, they managed to stay up twice before, among other things, after an injury to Aw, the team had to relegate again after the 1992/93 season. Aw then moved from being relegated to the regional league champion TG Landshut at the age of 28, who was promoted to the 2nd basketball league in 1993/94 . As a newcomer, the Landshut team immediately made it to the promotion round of the group south and finished in a respectable sixth place at the end of the season. In Landshut, however, Aw only stayed one season and switched to the previous league competitor and first division promoted from Oberelchingen .

The "Elche", as the team was nicknamed, surprisingly achieved a balanced season record in the 1994/95 basketball Bundesliga and made it into the play-off final round of the German championship, in which the former series champion was in the first round TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen lost. This success could also be repeated in the following basketball Bundesliga in 1995/96 , but was again without a win against defending champion Leverkusen in the first play-off round. Then Aw moved from the Danube to the Neckar to league rivals from Ludwigsburg . The Ludwigsburg, who had already missed the play-offs in the four previous seasons, only won three season games in the basketball Bundesliga in 1996/97 and also had to give way to USC Freiburg in the relegation round with the second division , which is why they followed relegated for the first time in eleven consecutive seasons. After a transition season they reached the first division relegation round in the 2nd basketball league in 1998/99 as south runner-up, in which the team was denied promotion against, among other things, USC Freiburg. Instead, the team was withdrawn to the regional league. Aw moved back to Bavaria at the age of 34 and played in Franconia for the previous league competitor DJK Falke from Nuremberg . With the southern champions of the 2nd basketball league in 1999/2000 , however, he failed again in the first division relegation round on promotion to the top division. After two mediocre sporting seasons, two seasons followed, in which the team was able to establish itself again in the upper third of the table in the southern group. Finally, after only three defeats this season, the second basketball league in 2004/05 succeeded in the renewed southern championship, which this time was linked to the right to promotion. Aw returned to the top German league at the age of 40, in which the Nuremberg team, as the table penultimate in the basketball Bundesliga 2005/06, missed out on a league game for a win.

Nuremberg played another first division season after the division was increased, but Aw left the professional division and played briefly in autumn 2006 for the regional division Longhorns from Herzogenaurach , before the Crailsheim Merlins brought him back to the second division in November 2006 . With the Crailsheimers Aw missed the qualification for the newly introduced ProA after the twelfth place in the 2. Basketball Bundesliga 2006/07 and played with the Merlins within the second division in the hierarchically subordinate ProB 2007/08 . After the fifth place in 2008 as a champion of the ProB 2008/09 the leap into the ProA succeeded, but the Aw no longer took part and withdrew from the national leagues at the age of 44. With the former second division club hapa Piranhas from Ansbach , most recently in the ProB in 2008, Aw played three more seasons until 2012 in the regional league, which is now the fourth highest division after the introduction of the ProB. After Aw started playing basketball very late, his technical skills, such as handling the ball, remained rather underdeveloped, as he himself admitted. Instead, Aw used his athleticism to achieve a particularly large number of rebounds and was considered a defensive specialist. In his style of play, he was thus similar to the then NBA All-Star Dennis Rodman , although Aw did not exude this rebound dominance in the basketball league as Rodman did in the NBA. In addition, Aw was not such an eccentric as Rodman, but due to his style of play, his charisma and then also advanced age, Aw was also considered a "cult figure" in German halls and was symbolic and positive for " old school " basketball. Because of his African ancestry, Aw has also been compared to Dikembe Mutombo .

Web links

• Karim Aw: I play until it tweaks - portrait of Klaus Helmstetter from December 7, 2007 as media information for the Crailsheim Merlins at schoenen-dunk.de
• easyCredit BBL - Karim Aw - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website (individual statistics with Nuremberg 2005/06)
• Karim Aw (proveo Merlins) - Profile on the statistics pages of the basketball leagues

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karim Aw - Indestructible. schoenen-dunk.de, July 23, 2008, accessed on February 14, 2016 (media information from Crailsheim Merlins). 
2. ↑ TSV 1865 Dachau Spurs - 1991. (No longer available online.) Dachau Spurs: DachauSpurs.de, archived from the original on February 14, 2016 ; accessed on February 14, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ TSV 1865 Dachau Spurs - 1993. (No longer available online.) Dachau Spurs: DachauSpurs.de, archived from the original on February 14, 2016 ; accessed on February 14, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Karim Aw leaves Nuremberg. schoenen-dunk.de, August 3, 2006, accessed on February 14, 2016 (Medien-Info Baskets Nürnberg). 
5. ↑ A crowd favorite says goodbye. Südwest-Presse , December 29, 2009, archived from the original on February 14, 2016 ; accessed on February 14, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Klaus Helmstetter: Karim Aw: I play until it tweaks. schoenen-dunk.de, December 7, 2007, accessed on February 14, 2016 (Medien-Info proveo Merlins). 
7. ↑ Tom Prager: FORWARD - Karim Aw - The German Mutombo. In: Forward , February 2009 edition. Schoenen-dunk.de, February 24, 2009, accessed on February 14, 2016 (repro).