World champion captain Dennis Schröder will not play any playoff games in the NBA before the Olympic Games.
Five games before the end of the main round, the basketball professional from Braunschweig and his team Brooklyn Nets can no longer make up the gap to tenth place in the Eastern Conference. The 115:111 win against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday evening (local time) didn’t change that, because the Atlanta Hawks won 121:113 against the Detroit Pistons in the parallel game.
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Schröder had a double-double of twelve points and eleven assists, as well as six rebounds.
Two weeks without basketball
In contrast to last season, when Schröder made it to the Western Conference finals with the Los Angeles Lakers before winning the World Cup, the 30-year-old has plenty of time to recover before the games in Paris.
The main round in the NBA ends on April 15th. The German national team’s first test match is scheduled for July 6th against France. “After the season, I definitely won’t touch basketball for two weeks,” announced Schröder.
Thoughts about retiring from the national team
He told the German press agency dpa that after winning the World Cup he had considered resigning from the national basketball team. “I briefly toyed with the idea and talked to my family about it.” Retiring as world champion and MVP of the tournament would have been “a blatant departure,” said Schröder.
“But because I’ve never played in the Olympic Games, I couldn’t imagine not playing for the national team anymore.” On the contrary: “I would like to play in the national team until I’m 40, like Dirk (Nowitzki) did.”
Wagner brothers win again
World champions Franz and Moritz Wagner, on the other hand, are increasingly likely to make it into the playoffs with the Orlando Magic. Thanks also to Franz Wagner’s 24 points and his brother’s 18 points, the score was 117:108 against the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Magic are currently in fourth place in the Eastern Conference and would even have home advantage in a playoff duel with the New York Knicks. Because the table is so tight, the team can still slip to eighth place and would then have to take part in the play-in – the Nets and Schröder have now finally missed that.
