There’s no place like home for Jakob Poeltl.
When the NBA schedule wraps up and the Raptors centre heads back to Austria for the summer, he’ll pick up the off-season routines and blend into the hometown culture in Vienna that he has shelved for eight months.
He’ll catch up with family and friends. He’ll eat the local dishes he doesn’t seek out while travelling across North America; the wiener schnitzel and pastries Austria is known for just aren’t the same on this side of the Atlantic. And he’ll take public transportation to the same four-court basketball facility where he learned the game as a teenager, playing for the Vienna Timberwolves.
“Falling back into old rhythms and habits is fun for me, just to live the life how I used to,†Poeltl tells the Star. “I mean, obviously things change, but some elements stay the same. So just doing that brings me a lot of joy.â€
Becoming the first Austrian to make the NBA when the Raptors drafted him in 2016 changed a lot for Poeltl; he has made tens of millions of dollars and gets recognized wherever he goes — being seven feet tall doesn’t necessarily allow someone to hide in plain sight. But those who know him back home say the 29-year-old is still the same guy he’s always been: “approachable,†“honest,†“simpatico.â€
“If you talk to him, if you get to know him, you would never know that he made millions,†says Benedikt Danek, who played for Austria’s national team alongside Poeltl in 2017 and is now an assistant coach. “You would never know that he’s an NBA player, just because he’s really humble.â€
When Jakob Poeltl was drafted by the Raptors in 2016, he gave kids playing basketball in Austria the opportunity to dream of one day playing in the NBA.
Steve Russell ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ StarWhile Poeltl hasn’t changed, basketball in Austria sure has. It’s hard to quantify how one player’s success can impact a sport in a country but, similar to how he makes the Raptors better in many small ways — rebounding, interior defence, spacing — it’s the little things that have come out of Poeltl’s one-of-a-kind basketball journey that tell the story.
The dream
The two most popular sports in Austria are skiing and soccer, so when Stefan Prager was growing up in the ‘90s, his love for basketball was, in a word, “exotic.â€
When he was 12 years old, Prager fell in love with the game because his grandfather’s neighbour had a basketball net in the driveway. He turned his passion into a career and started covering basketball in 2006 while working for a TV network that acquired the rights to a semi-professional basketball league.
Prager grew up watching the NBA — with the time difference in Austria, that meant a lot of late nights — but he never could have imagined he’d have the opportunity to cover the sport at a time when a young Austrian was making history.
“All of a sudden, you have a guy who made it to the NBA, who made your dream possible,†Prager says. He flew to New York for Poeltl’s draft night to watch his own dream come true for a countryman.
“I played in Syria and in the Austrian youth league, but every kid who plays basketball is dreaming of playing in the NBA. Nobody up until Jakob did it. For us in the basketball community, it was big because all of a sudden there were no jokes about Austria anymore. We had an NBA player.â€
Hubert Schmidt, right, coached Jakob Poeltl throughout his youth with the Vienna Timberwolves in Austria.
Vienna TimberwolvesPrager didn’t have someone at the height of his sport to idolize when he was younger like kids in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ have today with the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett and Andrew Wiggins. There were guys who played NCAA basketball but nobody had ever been drafted, let alone carved out a successful career as a starter.
“Even we as coaches, until he really made it, you never knew. Is it possible to come out of Austria and play in the NBA?†says Hubert Schmidt, Poeltl’s former youth coach with the Timberwolves who now runs the program’s women’s team. “It’s great for the motivation and also the belief within the community, that there is that one player who already made it.â€
Poeltl gave kids playing basketball in Austria the opportunity to dream big, and there are a lot of them these days.
The kids
In Vienna, all the basketball clubs are at capacity. The Timberwolves, where Poeltl played in the youth program for seven years, have teams from the under-eight level through to the top professional men’s and women’s leagues in the country.
“Basketball is, in general, growing quite a lot at the moment here in Austria,” Timberwolves GM Bernhard Oliva says. “We are a really huge club and last year we had almost 600 kids and 200 on the waiting line because we had not enough gyms for the practices and not enough coaches to take all the kids.”
There are many reasons for the game’s growth in Austria: the recent emergence of the 3x3 program, where the men’s and women’s teams have a combined FIBA ranking of No. 8, ahead of Canada at No. 12; the significant growth of European basketball, where even the NBA has been exploring new opportunities; and Poeltl, who is averaging career highs in points (14.6 per game) and rebounds (9.7) in his ninth NBA season.
The fourth edition of the Jakob Pöltl Basketball Camp will host about 140 kids this summer.
Jakob Pöltl/Nina StrasserIt’s one thing for the next generation of basketball players to catch Poeltl’s highlight reels from half a world away, it’s another to see it up close. So the Raptors centre launched the Jakob Pöltl Basketball Camp in 2022, in collaboration with the Timberwolves, catering to children eight to 14 who are learning the game.
“The big picture is just spreading awareness for sports in general and trying to get kids in Austria excited about basketball,†Poeltl says. “I think the idea behind it is for kids to have fun and really discover basketball for themselves.â€
Jakob Poeltl’s basketball camp caters to children eight to 14 who are learning the game.
Jakob Pöltl/Nina StrasserRegistration for the four-day camp fills up in 24 hours and there will be 140 kids in the fourth edition this summer. Its success is a reflection of the effort Poeltl puts in. He’s on the court teaching the kids and playing games with them. He’ll endlessly sign autographs and take pictures. He makes time to chat with everyone: the campers, the coaches, the parents. And, at least once a day, he ends up running around the gym with the younger kids hanging from his back.
One of Poeltl’s favourite parts is joining his campers on the bench during a break in play, just so he can check in.
“I like to see how they’re enjoying the camp, what’s going on, where they play,†he says. “They’ll seem a little bit shy in the beginning, and then someone really opens up and tells you about their plans to play basketball in the future, to be a professional, and that’s really cool.â€
The national team
There’s a lot of pride within the basketball community in Austria. They want to compete with the powerhouse teams in European basketball and earn their way to the biggest tournaments in the world. But they have work to do.
The men’s national team was ranked 67th in FIBA’s latest world rankings in February, with the women at No. 80. The national program’s best teams are the 3x3s, and both Prager and Oliva credit the success of those teams for helping the sport gain momentum in the country.
Jakob Poeltl, left, suited up for Austria against Germany at a World Cup qualification match in June, 2018.
Picture Alliance via Getty ImagesFor Poeltl and the men’s team, the biggest challenge has been a FIBA rule change in 2017 that saw qualifying go from summer tournaments during the NBA’s off-season to three soccer-style windows in November, February and sometime in the summer. The NBA season runs from October to April and free agency opens at the beginning of July.
Poeltl has only been able to play in a handful of qualifying events over the years. When he does, the impact is felt.
“When he really is an option for the national team, everybody’s kind of opening up their eyes. When the name Jakob is on the banner, it’s a big difference, it changes a lot,” Danek says.
“It used to be a lot of fun for me to play for the national team. (The new rules are) a little bit of a downer for me. I’ve missed a lot of national team games,†Poeltl says. “ Whenever I do get an opportunity, I try to do my best to kind of seamlessly put myself into the team, and obviously try to get the best results possible.â€
The Raptors were 4-28 (a .125 winning percentage) without Jakob Poeltl last season, and 21-29 (.420) with him.
Steve Russell/ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ StarPoeltl’s importance to Austrian basketball is similar to his role with the Raptors now. He’s not flashy, but he’s effective. The fact is, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ is a much better team when he’s in the lineup.
The Raptors are 6-13 (a winning percentage of .315) without Poeltl this season and 21-34 (.381) with him, according to StatMuse data. They were 4-28 (.125) without him last season, and 21-29 (.420) with him.
It’s the Jakob Poeltl Effect.
“I don’t know anybody who really cannot work with him or cannot play with him,” Danek says. “I know a lot of other players who made a career in Europe and they came back (home) and you can feel it. You can feel they’re above and they don’t want to talk to everybody. Jakob is totally not that way.”
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