Dennis Schroder: A Potential Star in the Making

After a brilliant last season that fell apart in the conference finals, the Atlanta Hawks now have to look forward. Not just to next season, but the future. Of their best players, Jeff Teague is the youngest at 27 years old. The Hawks need a young player with potential to be a star player to ensure the sustainability of their success. Enter Dennis Schroder,

Schroder, the 21-year-old point guard from Germany, has spent two years in the NBA. His first year, he played third string behind Teague and Shelvin Mack. His raw athletic talent may have cut it in Europe, but he struggled in the NBA, averaging only 3.7 points per game as a rookie.

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Then last season happened, and Schroder suddenly became a dangerous player in the Hawks’ second unit. Through both scoring and passing ability, the accurately named Baby Rondo started as a guy with flashy moves, then went to competent NBA rotation player, and now has become arguably a budding star in the league.

That being the case, the young Schroder still has a lot to improve upon, some of it on the court and some of it attitude related. While athleticism and talent are good NBA gifts, whether a player can use them to their full potential and truly achieve star status in the NBA is not a sure thing.

Schroder’s Skills

Dennis Schroder is fast. A non-superstar who makes people afraid to guard him is a rare commodity, and Schroder certainly makes the short list.  He’s quick, has a merciless fake, and has the body control necessary to hit crazy, contested drives.

There’s two kinds of players who excel in that around-the-basket creativity. The first is the players who score on the drive in the cerebral way, like Goran Dragic or Prime Manu Ginobili. They aren’t that athletic or ferocious, they just know exactly when to make the right move. Then there is the John Wall or Eric Bledsoe type, who use their athleticism to blow by anyone who stands in their way. Schroder is definitely the latter.

Watch his absolute dismantling of Rajon Rondo in a game at Dallas in December.

That reel shows Schroder’s ability to attack the basket. It also shows another skill that will help him develop into a really good NBA player, which is that he is an astute passer.

His intelligence as a player is sometimes overlooked. Freakishly athletic badass players like him are sometimes generalized as being too much brawn and not enough brain. Schroder, however, is quite an intelligent play maker. He’s able to time the movements of teammates and the rotation of opposing defenses, and he knows how to make the correct passes.

Schroder is quite an offensively gifted individual. he has great vision passing and physicality for scoring. Both of those skills being decently refined at a young age is a good sign for his career over the long-term.

Schroder’s Weaknesses

Regrettably, Schroder’s strengths are also the source of his greatest weaknesses. He’s basically a wizard who has yet to learn how to harness and control magic.

Schroder is an awkward fit in the Hawks system because he does fall into some ball-stopping habits. Like other players of a similar type, sometimes his flashy passes and crazy drives to the rim end up with foolish turnovers and terrible results.  He has a bit too hot of a head sometimes. In fact, he has something of the same upbringing as young players, particularly point guards, do in the NBA.

He played for mediocre German teams where he got to do whatever he wanted and control the ball at will. Now, he has to adjust his game to a system that favors team-first ball. Think of it like Michael Carter-Williams before he was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks. He, like Schroder overseas, was chasing stats and could do whatever he wanted because he was the best player on the floor. Now, Schroder has to adjust to the fact that this is no longer the case.

Offensively, Schroder has an incomplete game. He shot 35 percent from deep last year, but is wildly inconsistent with his long-range stroke. Defenders are smart enough to go under screens on him, and really the only reason he can still score is because of his speed and tenacity.

You can take The Artist Formerly Known As Rajon Rondo with that style of play, but good defensive point guards will not be so easily beaten. They have the foot speed to keep up with him and the intelligence not to bite on his fakes. Schroder has to be able to shoot to reach star status, because some opposing guards aren’t having it with his flashy drive stuff.  John Wall certainly isn’t having it.

Schroder is a smart passer, but he sometimes is a little too focused on style over substance. His basic passing technique isn’t refined either, which is not surprising for a young player. Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said this to Grantland’s Zach Lowe about the turnovers that result from Schroder’s less accurate passes.

"“It sounds counterintuitive, but the way he’s turning over the ball now — it’s a good thing,” Budenholzer says. “He’s really trying to get his teammates the ball in the right places.”"

Schroder is also not a good defensive player. Overall, opposing players shoot almost two percent higher than average when defended by Schroder, per NBA.com. That isn’t a horrible difference, and he still needs time improve defensively against the best players in the world.

Like most 21-year-old players in the NBA, Schroder is not yet adjusted. His path is a little less known, because he is coming from overseas and playing a very different style of ball than what he is used to. Many elements of his game are not consistent or refined, and that’s why for the time being he is still second fiddle to Teague.

His NBA Destiny

Prognosticating future stardom is difficult in a world where Kwame Brown was once drafted first overall. Anything can happen, and there’s no way to be sure of what will happen until it’s happening.

Three things are certain though. First, Schroder has the tools necessary to become a very good NBA player. The speed, the vision, the cerebral approach to managing an offense, are things that aren’t easy to teach. Some guys just have them, and those that do have an advantage on the path to stardom.

Second, Schroder has substantial work to do. He needs to drop his bad habits and improve on his weaknesses. It is strange to think, but for a budding star player, the list of things he does wrong is probably longer than the list of things he does right.

That’s the reality for young players no matter where we come from. No outsider really understands what it’s like to be an NBA player, and understanding that fact helps us put analysis of the game into a more accurate frame.

Finally, Schroder is in a great place if he wants to reach his full potential. He has veteran leadership and a great coach. They can help instill in him the culture that led the Hawks to 60 wins last season. He still does a lot of look-at-me stuff and his team sometimes suffers because of it, proving that he’s not out of the old ways just yet.

That said, he does show a respectable work ethic, and when his coach or a leader like Al Horford is talking, he knows to shut up and listen.

It is unlikely Schroder supplants Teague as the starting point guard this coming season. Teague is a great point guard for the way the Hawks like to play basketball. When Schroder fully embraces that culture and that style, there may be a point guard controversy soon after.

Schroder certainly has the natural gifts to become a starting point guard in the league, probably even a bona fide star player. The peak of his NBA ceiling is living up to the name German Rondo and keeping in that way (unlike American Rondo). However, insistence on doing flashy stuff for no reason and never learning to cool off an ego are possible. Essentially, he could also become German Dion Waiters.

Regardless of where on the spectrum he ends up, his development will be an interesting storyline for the Hawks going forward. Atlanta fans should be glad to have him around.

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