Dennis Schroder is ready to seize his moment with Raptors

Dennis Schroder is content these days. Comfortable even. And that’s not to say the 30-year-old point guard from Braunschweig, Germany who dyed his hair blonde and wore flashy clothing since he was a kid hasn’t always been comfortable in his own skin. He has, on the court too, where he picked up opposing ball-handlers 94-feet and called out his teammates without thinking twice.

But after signing a two-year, $25.4 million deal with the Toronto Raptors in free agency and helping the German national team win its first ever gold medal at an international basketball competition while claiming MVP of the 2023 World Cup, who could blame Schroder for feeling like he’s on top of the world?

“I’m from Braunschweig, Germany. I couldn't dream bigger than this,” Schroder told Yahoo Sports Canada after the Raptors’ final practice of the preseason. “This is the best league in the world. I've been here 10 years — it’s my 11th season. I made a lot of money in my career and my family is straight: I got three beautiful kids, a wife.

“I mean, I can't ask for more. Every single day I'm grateful.”

After all, Schroder is set to start at point guard for a championship organization — one that has fallen off in the past couple years but has the potential to vault back up the standings and into the playoffs for what would be just the second time in four seasons. He is ready to play for an executive that Schroder says has lusted after him for years and a head coach that he feels comfortable with due to their existing relationship and symbiotic styles of play.

In other words, everything is lining up for Schroder. And with all that good fortune, he can’t help but think about where he came from because, like many professional athletes, it wasn’t much.

Growing up in the small industrial town of Braunschweig in the north of Germany, where his mother was a hairstylist and his father was the manager of a technology firm, Schroder and his older brother Che entertained themselves by skateboarding around the park and playing pickup basketball every day. But basketball was always just a game for Schroder, who wanted to be like Che and get sponsored by the local skate shop.

That was until one day Schroder was seen playing pickup hoops at the right place, at the right time, by the right person. That’s when basketball found him. And then changed his life.

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Liviu Calin remembers a skinny Black kid running around Braunschweig in the early 2000s, blaring music out of his sound system while skateboarding from place to place, showing up all the other young kids in any sport of his choosing. As the assistant coach of Basketball Löwen Braunschweig, a team playing in Germany’s first division, as well as a “state coach” for Braunschweig’s farm team, SUM Baskets Braunschweig, Calin traveled all over the country to camps and academies searching for young talent, “but Dennis was in my town,” he says. “It was easy.”

One day, Calin saw Schroder playing pickup hoops in the park when he was about nine years old and asked him to come to a practice. “He was the guy who found me in the park and told me to come to basketball,” Schroder remembers. “So, without him, I probably wouldn't even be here.”

After helping him hone his streetball skills in a more organized environment, Calin got Schroder to try out for a basketball academy, where he was selected for one of the only 12 spots, practising three times a week in a team setting for the first time. However, after a few years there — at about 13 — Schroder started to get a bad reputation for speaking out of turn and not always doing what the coaches asked of him, moving to a different club in a neighboring town.

“[He always had a] big personality,” Calin remembers. “He likes to be the leader. He had every time something to say when the other guys didn't do something [right]. He wanted all the time to win. If he didn't win, he would react, get frustrated, critique the other guys if they didn't play okay. And for this reason, it was not always comfortable for the other guys.”

Despite his reputation and brash personality, Calin was convinced by a friend of Schroder’s to give him another chance in Braunschweig. “I talked with him and I said, ‘Look, this is the direction that I want you to take,’ Calin explains. “And I cannot forget. He said to me: ‘Liviu, I will show you that I will do everything that you want and I will get exactly where you want and I will get to be a professional player at 15.’ And from this moment, I said: ‘Okay, so come to the farm team.’”

SUM Baskets Braunschweig was a young developmental team that played in Germany’s second division, but the level of play was high, especially for a 15-year-old Schroder relatively new to organized basketball and going against American imports up to 24 years old. Schroder still had an attitude problem with coaches and teammates at times, but the turning point came at a practice when Calin got him to defend different players at several spots on the floor. He had to get a certain number of spots in order to move on from the drill, but his older teammates refused to take it easy on him, scoring on him over and over and making him repeat the drill until Schroder got so frustrated that he started to cry.

“And for me it was like a test. A test to see how can he resist,” Calin says. “I said: ‘you have to decide if you can play at this level.’” When Schroder didn’t say anything in response, Calin was sure he would never come back to practice again. But the next day, there he was. “And after this moment, he was like a machine,” Calin remembers. “He was very, very serious. Very, very dedicated with me.”

“Some other coaches or people had some, I cannot say problems, but complaints about him. But me, nothing. He was perfect.”

“He was just the guy who was honest every single time,” Schroder says about Calin, who became the owner of Basketball Löwen Braunschweig during COVID when the club went through a rough patch in order for Calin to keep his job. “Keeping people accountable. It didn’t matter if you're the first, best player or the last or one of these young guys or the older guys. He just kept it real.

“Without him, I probably wouldn't even be near where I'm at.”

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Calin came to be a “father figure” in Schroder's life, according to Dennis, helping him ascend the German basketball ranks as he started to play with the German national youth teams before signing a “corporation” contract with Basketball Löwen Braunschweig to split time between SUM Baskets Braunschweig of Germany’s second division and Phantoms Braunschweig of the German Bundesliga.

But one day, when he was 16, Schroder went to school and didn’t feel well. He knew that something was off. So, when he returned home after school, he found his entire family waiting in the kitchen.

“They said, 'Sit down. Your dad passed away,’” Schroder told Bleacher Report in 2017 about his father, Axel. “He was still laying there. I had to touch him.”

“That changed my whole life because I told him the week before, 'I'm going to take it serious with basketball.' Because he supported me, too. He was there for my first game. After that happened, I was like, 'I have to get in the gym.'"

Schroder’s days of hanging out at the park from dusk until dawn were over. He started going straight from school to the youth team's gym in time for a two-hour practice, then into another team's practice that lasted until 9, then he'd play in pickup games until almost midnight before catching the bus home and collapsing into bed.

In the 2012–13 season, Schroder played 32 games for Phantoms Braunschweig in the German Bundesliga, averaging 12 points, 3.2 assists and 2.5 rebounds in 25 minutes per game. He was named the League's Most Improved Player as well as Best Young German Player as NBA scouts started showing up to the tiny gym of about 3,600 to watch him play.

“Just an extremely talented young player who, because of his athleticism, could create a lot of things,” Team Germany head coach Gordie Herbert said about his first impressions of Schroder at age 18. “Obviously he's very quick and you look at his athleticism and how well he gets to the paint, but his basketball IQ is extremely high.”

Schroder was invited to the 2013 Nike Hoop Summit for the World Select Team alongside Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns, outscoring all of them with 18 points and six assists in the 112-98 win over Team USA. His draft stock immediately skyrocketed from a late second-round pick to a first-round pick, so he declared for the 2013 NBA Draft and was selected 17th overall by the Atlanta Hawks.

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Schroder was luckier than most international players who come to the United States and have to quickly adjust to a new lifestyle and style of play. Despite rarely playing in his first season with the Hawks, Schroder had a head coach in Mike Budenholzer who demanded that his team share the ball in a similar manner that he grew up with in Europe, as well as trusted veterans like Paul Millsap, Al Horford and Elton Brand who helped him learn the ropes of the NBA. Those Hawks teams played unselfishly and grew together, winning 60 games in his second season there.

Schroder thinks the Raptors share some similar characteristics to those teams, noting that Atlanta was the only other time in his NBA career he felt this level of unselfishness and ball movement. “It’s just freely basketball,” Schroder explains. “The league is more stagnant. They want to play one on one. And I mean, we’re moving the ball, we're doing it as a team.”

“It's not normal to have that. So that's the reason why I chose the Raptors.”

Darko Rajakovic is at the head of Toronto’s stylistic and cultural overhaul. As the only European head coach in the NBA, Schroder and Rajakovic developed a relationship when they were both in Oklahoma City, immediately connecting on a human level when Rajakovic invited Schroder and his family to go out for dinner.

“With him being the head coach, he knows what I can bring to the team: handling the ball more, being the leader out there,” Schroder says. “So, right now I feel good. We have been working on moving the ball and making sure everything is as a team, we do everything as a team.”

“In Europe, from the youngest age, we're trying to coach and teach players how to play with pace, how to play with a lot of passing,” says Rajakovic, who is trying to instill those same principles into the Raptors offense through drills like 5-on-5 with no dribbling. “That kind of is the style of [the] majority of the teams in Europe play. So probably it has something to do with [how well Schroder fits] as well.”

But make no mistake: As a journeyman who has been everywhere from Atlanta to Oklahoma City to Boston to Los Angeles, playing with future Hall of Famers Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis and LeBron James — but never the centerpiece of a team — Schroder knows that Toronto is the place he can unlock his full potential, on and off the court. After losing former starting point guard and vocal leader Fred VanVleet to free agency, Schroder hopes to fill a void by leaning on all the advice and experience he has gotten from playing with all-time greats.

Schroder says leadership is also about being the same person no matter the circumstances, not changing your demeanour based on a good game or a bad one. “Because at the end of the day, I want to be a great guy. I want to be a good teammate and I want to feel nobody thinking: oh, Dennis didn't score and he doesn't feel [good] right now… I'm still doing all my stuff on the defensive end, rebounding, steals, whatever, and I'm still talking to my teammates. It [doesn't] matter what my field [goal] percentage is.”

In fact, Schroder says the key to being a good veteran is knowing how to impact winning and showing the young players “How to play the real [way]. Not just getting your stats, but are you winning games? Or what do you do to win games?

“That's what it comes down to,” Schroder explains. “People are always telling me, ‘Dennis, score 20 or 30 points.’ It's not about that. It's about how you win games and how you impact winning. And that's what I learned over my career.”

Last season with the Lakers, Schroder averaged 12.6 points and 4.5 assists with an effective field goal percentage of 48.2, which is right around league average. But he also played more minutes than any other Laker because he consistently did the little things to help them win. Still, Schroder only started three games in the playoffs and didn’t have as big of a role as he could have in Toronto, where the coach values him.

“He's a great point guard,” Rajakovic says. “He connects with guys. He plays great defense. He's in the right position right now. I think his best basketball is still ahead of him. And he's a player that we believe in and we trust him a lot.”

“They believe in me, coach believes me, and my teammates as well,” Schroder says. “It's a great opportunity for me to go out and show who I really am.”

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The coaches who have known Schroder the longest believe the way to get the most out of him is by putting him in the starting lineup, in a leadership role, and by allowing him to be himself on the court. Sure, he is going to ruffle some feathers, because Schroder always tells it like it is even if it can be difficult to hear, and that goes for teammates, opponents and even coaches.

“Dennis, he speaks what’s on his mind sometimes. He's outspoken,” Herbert says. “But you respect what he says because you know he's not going to B.S. you. He's gonna say what he has to say.”

“I tell our players: ‘I’d rather try to tame a lion than teach a cat how to roar,’” Herbert says. “The competitiveness is great. It's something that, as the coach, if you have to teach effort, if you have to teach competitiveness, it's really tough. And when your best players lead by example, it's really good.”

So far, in the professional ranks and the international game, the pros of Schroder’s brash personality have generally outweighed the cons. And the proof is in the pudding.

“I think one of the biggest things we did was make Dennis the captain two years ago, and he really embraced the role,” Herbert says after handing the reins to Schroder ahead of the 2022 EuroBasket. “He takes a lot of pride in it… This year he took it to a different level on both ends of the floor.”

Schroder averaged 19.1 points, 6.1 assists and 1.4 steals at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, helping the underdog Germans win the gold medal while shining as the MVP of the tournament. It was a monumental moment in Schroder’s career, given that he was born and raised in Germany, learned how to play the game there, came up through the German basketball ranks and cares deeply about giving back to the community by purchasing his hometown team and helping grow the game locally.

Team Germany was greeted by thousands of fans in Frankfurt upon arriving home from the Philippines, but it paled in comparison to the reception Schroder received when he returned to Braunschweig a few days later, when 8,000-10,000 people left school and work in the middle of the day to flood the town square and welcome home their local basketball hero — the same little kid who used to make noise skateboarding around town who, against all odds, led Germany to its first gold medal.

“I didn't really believe that,” Schroder says about the reception in Braunschweig. “For that many people to come out and show love, it's just amazing. And I mean, Germany is where I'm from, and I try to represent it as best as possible every single day.”

“You can believe it or not, but Dennis is like how in soccer Argentina won the World Cup and Messi was the king,” Calin explains. “In Germany, in basketball, Dennis with this team became a big star and a big personality of this country, and a personality of all German sport.

“This is a sensation.”