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Inside The Huskies

Steinbach Was So Good, His NBA Early Entry Was A Given All Along

The German joins a host of other Huskies who were one-and-done players.
Dan Raley|
Hannes Steinbach has an agent since the season ended.
Hannes Steinbach has an agent since the season ended. | Dave Sizer photo

With the season winding down, Hannes Steinbach was asked if there was any chance he might return to the University of Washington basketball team.

He offered two words, a couple of nods of his head and a sly smile, "Yeah, maybe."

Yeah, right.

This week, without any fanfare at all, Steinbach's agency, Excel Sports, which he signed on with a month ago, confirmed to DraftExpress the 6-foot-11 big man from Germany will enter the upcoming NBA Draft.

No maybes about it.

The scouts have projected him as a No. 10 to 15 pick for some time now.

Thus ends Steinbach's basketball connection to the UW after a glorioius one-and-done season for him -- not unlike former Huskies Dejounte Murray, Marquese Chriss, Markelle Fultz, Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels before him, who all embarked on immediate pro basketball careers.

They all were in a hurry to get to the NBA and all had enough talent to make it happen.

Steinbach's agency announced they had signed him on March 17, which was really confirmation enough that he truly was pro bound, without anyone saying it out loud.

A few reports suggest he was offered huge sums of NIL money to remain a college player elsewhere, with the UW likely not able to match those numbers had it got to that.

While Fultz scored 23.2 points per game over 25 outings, Steinbach had perhaps the finest all-round freshman season in UW annals by averaging 18.2 points and 11.8 rebounds while shooting 57.7 percent, 34 percent from 3-point range, in 30 appearances.

The Huskies did their most masterful recruiting job under coach Danny Sprinkle by uncovering Steinbach in Europe and getting a commitment out of him before all the other Blue Bloods found out what they were missing.

So fundamentally sound and athletic for a big man, Steinbach came in and established himself by becoming an immediate UW starter.

He scored in double figures in every game he played and reached 20 points or more on 16 occasions, with a high of 29 against UCLA at home.

He reached double figures on 22 occasions, with a high of 24 boards against USC in Seattle.

So now Steinbach will follow the retired Detlef Schrempf, the late Christian Welp and family friend and similarly retired Dirk Nowitski as highly polished German players into the NBA, looking to mature and develop into a special player.

The Huskies can only offer regrets that they weren't better than 16-17 with him in the lineup.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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