By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
MANILA, Philippines – No matter the sector or the metric, Germany is one of the biggest countries of the world.
However, this doesn’t apply to basketball and after reaching the World Cup Final Dennis Schroder hopes that this can change.
To be exact, that’s one of his main motivation for being a longtime member of the national team, trying to put Germany on the “basketball map” and make Germany – a football dominated country – really love the sport.
As he said to the media in the last – optional – practice before tomorrow’s big final (14.40 CET) against Serbia: “I hope that basketball gets to be little bit more attractive and gets more attention. Because I’ve been here 10 years now, and from that point to this point, it’s a huge difference. And I’m glad that I can be a part of it. And try to put Germany, our country, on the map. And that’s the reason why I play a national team. I try to help others, like little guys coming up, same as me, 15 years ago. That they can make a difference take care of their families and play on big stages”.
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Being himself a part of the big stage, as a longtime NBA player, Schroder wants to treat the final like every other game: “I mean, when you play basketball, you compete on the highest level anyway. Every summer game, it’s the same game for me. Of course, it’s the World Cup, it’s a big honor to play in the finals. It’s something special, but at the end of the day, it’s still a game”.
Germany will not change anything to their approach, as their captain explained: “We’re still going through the same routine. We got us here, and we earned every single bit of it. We worked hard, and that’s what we try to bring tomorrow. If we do that as a team, and we stay together and do the things that we do well, then we can take care of business. I think everybody mentally is there. Everybody’s not taking it for granted to be here in the finals. But I mean, it’s one more game, and we’re going to give everything we have for 40 minutes”.
Schroder had an off-game in the quarterfinals against Slovenia, but he was ready to go in the historic win against the USA.
As he explained, that’s his responsibility as the captain: “To control that the shots go in, you can never control that. To stay positive and give my teammates the confidence they need, no matter if I make or miss shots, I think that’s the biggest one. I think as a leader, that’s your responsibility, especially the captain. You’ve got to stay positive at all times. We’ve been doing a great job as a team, staying together as a team, and enjoying being together as a group”.
And of course, he will get a good and long sleep, because after the semifinal, he didn’t: “I went to sleep really late. I enjoyed that one last night with my family, with my teammates. We wrote history. No one believed that we were here or we can’t come this far. To write history in the Philippines, in Manila, is something special. Last night I didn’t sleep that much, but I’m going to get my rest tonight”.