Dennis Schröder (l.) continues his strong twelfth NBA season in San Francisco.
Photo: dpa/Rick Scuteri
A promise made before the season was Dennis Schröder's undoing. At the start of the new NBA season, the captain of the German national basketball team declared: “No matter which team I was on, I always wanted to reach the playoffs and of course I will give everything to achieve that.” The announcement caused some astonishment in mid-October, because Schröder The previous team, the Brooklyn Nets, was hardly expected to do anything – especially after the Nets transferred their best player Mikal Bridges to their city rivals, the New York Knicks, in the summer.
But Schröder followed up his confident statement with the best start to the season of his NBA career. With 18.4 points and 6.6 assists on average, the 31-year-old led the Nets to ten wins from the first 25 games. This means that the team from Brooklyn is surprisingly in the race for the playoff places this year. With his top form, the Braunschweig native didn't fit into the plans of the Nets, who are in a state of change, want to rely on young players and are willing to accept defeats this season in order to be in the draft, the NBA's talent lottery, next year to have better chances in the summer. The teams with the worst record there have the best chance of selecting the top talent.
However, Schröder has been just too good so far to let the Nets be really bad. This is also why the development player has to change teams again after just ten months. From New York the national team captains travel to San Francisco to meet the Golden State Warriors. The early timing of the change in particular did not leave him unscathed. “To be traded so early, after 25, 26 games, is tough,” said Schröder to the German Press Agency (dpa). Most player trades in the NBA come in the days leading up to the February trade deadline.
The second key reason why the 1.88 meter tall point guard has a new team again – this is Schröder's eighth NBA stop in the last six years – is the clear goals of his new employer. Unlike the Brooklyn Nets, the only thing that currently counts for the Golden State Warriors and their alternative superstar Steph Curry is the NBA title. Since 2015, the Warriors have won the championship four times, making them the most successful team of the past ten years. But only Curry, defensive ace Draymond Green and coach Steve Kerr remain from the core of the championship team. The last title came in 2022. Last season, the Warriors completely missed the playoffs. At the Olympics in Paris, club legend Curry showed extremely impressively that even at the age of 36, he is still capable of deciding finals. In the final against France, the best three-point shooter of all time quickly single-handedly threw the USA to gold in the final minutes.
The Californians started the new season with corresponding ambition. But after a promising start, there have been eight defeats in the last ten games. Schröder should now help as quickly as possible to stop this downward trend and replace the seriously injured De'Anthony Melton, who is going to Brooklyn in exchange for the German, where he will no longer play this season due to his torn cruciate ligament.
Schröder therefore sees the unusually early exchange as a leap of faith on the part of his new team. “It says how much they want you, of course. “In the end, it’s very, very cool,” explained the development player, who has repeatedly emphasized since winning the World Cup with Germany how important it is for his performance that his coach and team trust him. His joy at the first statements from his new team must have been correspondingly great. Warriors coach Kerr was enthusiastic about the Schröder transfer: “He's a gambler, a competitor, a pick-and-roll player, a player who is good at the front and back.” The 59-year-old has already announced that He plans to let the Braunschweiger play in the starting lineup together with superstar Curry. And Curry himself was also pleased with his new teammate: “He gives us everything we need. I’m really excited to play with him.”
It is questionable whether the world champion is enough to secure the next NBA title for the team from California. Golden State is part of the extended circle of title candidates, but Schröder alone is not enough to make the Warriors the top favorite. Instead, Golden State should try to strengthen itself even further with further trades. If Dennis Schröder doesn't become a moving mass again, he could have the best chance of winning his first championship title in his twelfth year in the NBA.
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