Dennis Schröder: Germany’s Basketball Star

It is a sometimes deceptive nonchalance with which Dennis Schröder plays the bright, cleanly shiny EM parquet of the Nokia-Arena in the Finnish tampere these days. No question, Schröder sweats from every pore of his wiry body – when he asks his opponents to the dance on the triple line, meanders with his crossovers to the basket, slightly falling up to the throw. It is a trademark of Showman-Schröder.

The nonchalance is only deceptive because sometimes one takes a back seat when Schröder makes his opponents look miserably grinning: the adult seriousness of the 31-year-old. Year after year, she has recently matured in him, until Schröder became a multi -layered leader of the extra class, which not only shapes German basketball in terms of sport.

A photo on Facebook causes excitement around Dennis Schröder

At the beginning of this development, the discussions about Schröder were not very sporty. In summer 2016, for example, when the then 22-year-old raised a photo on Facebook: a large villa in Atlanta, before that two luxury sledges shiny in gold. He is still asked about the photo today, explains Schröder in the current podcast “you can’t say” with Moritz Wagner.

Today it is a symbol image for the image that Schröder held most of his career. A good basketball player, but also “extremely withdrawn”, “just embarrassing” and of course “not a good role model”. The comments under the photo offered a foretaste of the multi-voiced Schröder criticism. “I had to tidy up for the past eleven years. Although people didn’t know me, they had a certain picture of me,” says Schröder.

This picture has completed almost a dozen NBA teams and a World Cup title later. On the parquet, in its YouTube videos and its streams, sides of Schröder have become visible that have remained hidden behind the photos of his golden cars. The complicated childhood, the committed loyalty to his Braunschweig hometown, his role as a father.

Schröder’s family is also omnipresent in Tampere. When the selection of the German Basketball Association plays for first place in Group B against Finland on Wednesday (7.30 p.m.), his brother and mother, Ms. Ellen and the three children will sit right on the edge of the field. After the game, the Schröders will go back to German team hotel. They used to be the only family with the national team. Dennis booked and them additional rooms because he wanted to have his children with him in summer and wanted to take care of it. “People then spoke of my entourage,” said Schröder – mostly with a negative undertone.

In the meantime, the families of the players are welcome guests at the DBB. Most recently in the European Championship training camp in Malaga, the units of national coach Alex Mumbru were long and intensive, but explicitly family-friendly in the early afternoon. Family man Maodo Lo therefore speaks of a “the coolest training camp that I have ever had” and Schröder summarizes: “We managed to involve our families in such a way that the whole national team now really feels like a family,” says Schröder.

This feeling is a result of the negotiations that a group around Schröder and co-star Franz Wagner led with the DBB in spring. Their further results: significantly higher premiums, better medical care, better conditions on trips- and in all of this no differences between the men’s and the women’s team. If Schröder was demanding on his own behalf, he is now a kind of chief diplomat of the German international.

So Schröder fills a wide variety of roles this summer – from the family to diplomatic. This works because Schröder works. Regardless of whether the family man gets little sleep before a game, whether he had played for 30 long minutes the day before or is racially insulted by a Lithuanian fan at half -time – Schröder delivers. He marches in the national jersey every day. Its 22.3 points and 5.5 assists at this European Championship are one, its mentality is the other. “Dennis is a type of competition that doesn’t do half things,” says DBB-Forward Daniel Theis about his friend, “he goes out and gives 100 percent-always!”

Dennis Schröder is always the first in the hall

Schröder sets the standard in this way – in the games, but also in training. When the best player in your team is the first in the hall after his twelfth NBA season in summer and works most hardest there, there are no more excuses. “Dennis also kicks people in their butt when he knows what they can do but don’t call it up,” says Theis. Schröder is more than respected by his teammates. Regardless of whom you speak of them in Tampere, they all praise their captain in the highest, but still honest sounding tones.

And Schröder’s public perception also changes. “The love I get now is incredible,” says Schröder. Something thoughtless interview statements continue to fly around his ears. Even with his still glittering lifestyle, some people are still stranging. But all of this moves bit by bit into the steadily growing shadows of the captain of the German national team and their sporting success.