Niels Giffey


Niels Giffey is a German basketball player who plays for Alba Berlin of the Basketball Bundesliga. Standing at, he plays at the shooting guard and small forward positions. He also represented German national basketball team in the international competitions.
He played collegiately for the University of Connecticut Huskies men's basketball team. In his freshman year, he was part of the team that won the 2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. He was again one of UConn's key players when they won the NCAA tournament for a second time in four years in 2014. Giffey and his UConn teammates Shabazz Napier and Tyler Olander are the only Division I men's basketball players in history to have won national championships as freshmen and seniors.

Early life

Giffey was born on June 9, 1991 in Berlin. He is the son of Frank and Christine Giffey. He attended and competed for the club team Alba Berlin.

College career

Giffey committed to play basketball at the University of Connecticut under coach Jim Calhoun. As a freshman, he was a reserve on the squad which won the 2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. After winning the tournament, he said, “It was such an emotional time for me, that this university, this team, became such a big part of my heart and became so close to me that it never crossed my mind to leave this place. I always felt it was about being a student-athlete at UConn. This school gave me so much when I won my national championship with this team.” Giffey scored four points and grabbed six rebounds in the championship game against Butler. On the season, he averaged 2.2 points and 1.4 rebounds in 9.9 minutes per game.
As a sophomore, Giffey averaged 2.6 points and 1.5 rebounds per game. He missed the first game of the season after hyper extending his elbow in the preseason.
As a junior, he averaged 4.9 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. He injured his knee in a game against Cincinnati on March 3, 2013 and missed the remainder of the season.
In the semifinal game of the 2014 American Athletic Conference Men's Basketball Tournament Giffey scored a career-high 24 points, including six three-pointers, to help Connecticut defeat Memphis 72-53 on March 14, 2014.

Professional career

Following graduation, Giffey played on the 2014 Memphis Grizzlies summer league team and then the Utah Jazz summer league team. On July 15, 2014, the German team Alba Berlin announced that they had signed him for three seasons.
On 29 July 2019, Giffey extended his contract with Alba for two more seasons, until 2022. Serving as the Berlin team captain, Giffey won the German national championship as well as the German Cup competition in 2020.

Honours and titles

Team

;Alba Berlin
;UCONN

EuroLeague