Dennis Schroder has a summer job ahead of him, if you will. He plans on playing for Germany.
“I’m going to play for the national team and see if we can qualify for the European Championships,” Schroder said.
During the season, Schroder twice met with Chris Fleming, the coach of the German national team, to discuss his plans. In March, after the second of those two meetings, Schroder said that he would play in the summer if he was healthy at the end of the season.
He ended the season healthy, and the gig is on.
Germany will be trying to qualify for Eurobasket 2017. The games begin Aug. 31 and run through most of September. Schroder will be trying to help Germany emerge from a qualifying bracket that also includes Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
“I think it helped me a lot the last two years,” Schroder said of playing for the national team. “I made a step every year. I think it’s great to compete against different types of players.”
Schroder is 100 percent correct about making a step every year. This season, his second as a regular rotation player and his third overall, he set career highs in points, assists, steals and rebounds. He also finished ninth in the voting for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award, receiving a total of nine votes.
Perhaps most impressively, Schroder worked himself into being an outstanding defender in a league where guarding point guards is the toughest of jobs. Opposing coaches sometimes noted that, in playing Schroder and Thabo Sefolosha together, the Hawks had two defensive aces coming off their bench.
The numbers back up that assertion. When Schroder and Sefolosha were paired on the floor, the Hawks’ defense allowed a frugal 92.8 points per 100 possessions.
Head Coach Mike Budenholzer gave Schroder the reins to the team at the end of games when it was clear that he had the hot hand.
“In this situation that I was in this year, I was fine with it,” Schroder said. “I played my minutes, and I just tried to get better.”
Like any 22-year-old prodigy, he aspires to a role bigger than the one he currently has, but he’s also realistic about embracing his current situation with a positive outlook.
“In the future, I want to be a starting point guard,” he said. “I’ll just keep working for it. When it comes, it comes.”
When asked about how he hopes to improve this summer, Schroder said that he would try to set up a jump shot tutorial with Kyle Korver similar to the session that the two shared last summer.
Then Schroder broke into a big, mischievous smirk for one last self-improvement goal.
“I’ll try to be stronger next year and dunk some more balls,” he said. “I’ve got to be better finishing at the rim.”
Story by KL ChouinardTwitter: @KLChouinard
