The Bundesliga goes NBA
Cologne - A host of Bundesliga stars will have had their eyes straining across the Atlantic to see the start of the NBA season on Tuesday.
bundesliga.com looks at some of the stars of the German top flight who enjoy shooting a few hoops...
A living legend
Borussia Dortmund defender Mats Hummels had the pleasure of meeting Würzburg native and NBA legend Dirk Nowitzki back in June 2013. Dallas Mavericks' power forward Nowitzki is widely regarded as Germany's greatest-ever basketball player and is also the highest-scoring foreign player in NBA history.
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Boateng vs Schröder...
He is one of the world's best defenders but Jerome Boateng of FC Bayern München also fancies himself as a dab hand on the basketball court. Here he is succeeding with a slam dunk...
...and challenging German NBA star Dennis Schröder of the Atlanta Hawks to perform a few tricks himself. You can make your own mind up about whose showboating was more impressive!
Owo meets...
Former Bundesliga star and host of our Owo meets series, Patrick Owomoyela, also happened to run into Schröder at an FC Bayern basketball game earlier this year:
Mats gets involved
And here we have Hummels performing a slam dunk of his own:
Alaba takes in a game
This was David Alaba posing for a photo at a New York Knicks vs Miami Heat game in December 2014:
Bayer in Florida
Bayer 04 Leverkusen visited Florida back in January as part of the Bundesliga World Tour 2015. Kyriakos Papadopoulos, Karim Bellarabi, Hakan Calhanoglu and the rest of the squad made sure not to pass up the opportunity to see some Orlando Magic:
Kroos the patriot
SV Werder Bremen midfielder Felix Kroos took a keen interest in the FIBA Eurobasket 2015 this summer, regularly posting messages of support for the German team on Twitter. This picture of himself and Nowitzki reads, 'One country. One team. One dream.'
Schürrle in London
VfL Wolfsburg midfielder Andre Schürrle looks like he enjoyed this visit to a NBA game in London:
Shooting some hoops
This was Roman Weidenfeller, Max Kruse and former Bayern midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger (l. - r.) enjoying a quick game before Germany's friendly with the USA in Cologne back in June: