Isaiah Hartenstein wins the NBA title with Oklahoma City Thunder

The “German Wunderkind” celebrated his finest hour in 2011: Dirk Nowitzki became the first German basketball player to win the NBA championship with the Dallas Mavericks. 14 years later, “IHart” held the championship trophy aloft in his big hands. Isaiah “IHart” Hartenstein won the championship with Oklahoma City Thunder - only the second German to achieve this after Dirk Nowitzki.  

27-year-old Hartenstein, whose mother is American and whose father is a German basketball pro and coach, played basketball in Quakenbrück in Lower Saxony as an adolescent. Like pretty much every German basketball player of his generation, no matter at which level, he still remembers that unforgettable moment in 2011: “I watched the final with my whole family and with friends somewhere in Quakenbrück. Seeing Nowitzki gave me self-confidence,” Hartenstein told the dpa following the victory: “It showed me that if he can do it, I can do it too. Thanks, Dirk.” 

The path from Quakenbrück to Oklahoma City, from the under-16s team of a German basketball Bundesliga team to NPA champion in Oklahoma, is just as long as it sounds. At the Hartenstein family home, father Florian told German daily newspaper taz that a rug in the shape of a basketball court lay in their living room - it sported a plastic basket that three-year-old Isaiah would put balls into. “He didn’t have a chance,” said his father, looking back, “he just had to end up playing basketball.”  

Hartenstein realised early on that he wanted to make it to the NBA 

The things that enabled Hartenstein to get so far are no different from those that characterise his role model, Nowitzki. Obviously you need talent and the physical capabilities, but also discipline and hard work, hard work and then some more hard work. “On New Year’s Eve I was always the oddball who was still at training. I was always there at midnight. People would ask me, why are you doing that? And I would tell them, because I want to get into the NBA, I want to prove myself, I want to win.” 

In his seventh year, Hartenstein - who plays centre - finally made it into the NBA, established himself and was respected for his excellent passes, clever blocks and his ability to assert himself under the basket. This respect is also evident in his bank account: ahead of the season, Thunder extended his contract by three years and 87 million dollars. 

NBA champion invests in Bundesliga club Ulm 

He has invested part of his income in the German Bundesliga club Ulm. In August 2025 Hartenstein will be coming to Ulm, where he will be staging a basketball and concert event - the iHart Fest: “I want to try to give back as much as possible in Germany.” 

That isn’t necessarily something one could have taken for granted, as his relationship with Germany hasn’t always appeared easy. Or at least his relationship with German sport: for years, the centre wasn’t even picked for the national squad. Hartenstein wanted to concentrate on his NBA career, which is why he didn’t want to sign an exclusive three-year contract with the German team. So he had no chance of getting in. “Many people in Germany couldn’t understand why I wasn’t playing in the national team and why I had to build up my career in this way to get to where I am today.” At the very top of the NBA, in other words. (with dpa)