Why was an NBA point guard playing regional soccer in Germany?

A remote football pitch in a village in northern Germany is not somewhere you would expect to see an NBA point guard.

But it was here, at FC Germania Bleckenstedt – who play at the sixth level of German football – that you could find Dennis Schroder on an overcast afternoon at the end of last month.

Since entering the NBA in 2013, as the 17th pick in that year’s draft, Schroder has toured the league. Five years with the Atlanta Hawks ended in 2018 when he was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Since then, Schroder has had six different teams in as many years, most recently being traded this February to the Brooklyn Nets, who finished the season with 32 wins and 50 losses.

Originally from Braunschweig, a city of around 250,000 people in the north of Germany, Schroder has been playing for his country’s national basketball team since 2014.

Unlike most other NBA players, he did not attend a U.S. college. Instead, he began his professional career in the Bundesliga (BBL), German basketball’s highest level, before entering the NBA draft as a 19-year-old, having already become the youngest all-star in BBL history. It’s a record he still holds.

Brooklyn did not make the playoffs this year, and when their season ended in the middle of April, Schroder returned home — and to the parochial confines of semi-professional football.

On recent trips back, he has been an occasional presence at Germania Bleckenstedt’s games. Not only is it about 20 minutes from where he grew up, it’s also where his brother-in-law, Daniel Ziolo, has been playing football since 2021. And when his career has allowed, Schroder has gone along to support him.

But it’s hard to be inconspicuous in Bleckenstedt, a village around an hour’s drive southeast of Hanover, the state capital. Their home ground looks much like any other regional football ground in the country. Rather than the stands you’d see at higher levels of the game, its pitch is surrounded by metal railings painted yellow and blue, the colours of the club crest, and fringed by trees. Cars are parked a few yards from the sidelines.

Bleckenstedt itself is home to hundreds rather than thousands of people and the small clusters of fans who turn out to watch their local side reflect that. Attendance data is elusive, but that is because it’s somewhere where anybody can turn up and watch. Some are always there  —  like ‘Block F’, Bleckenstedt’s hardy band of dedicated ‘ultras’ fans.

In the background, small kiosks do a gentle trade, while a canal – built to serve the factories and warehouses that still sit alongside it – creeps quietly past behind one side of the pitch. And when Bleckenstedt kick off their home games, it’s under the shadow of towers and turbines in the distance.

An online teamsheet from the game against SC Gottingen records the oddity of the occasion. Among the thumbnail portraits of the players picked to start, some have no photos available, which is hardly unusual at this level of German football. Others have a wonky, iPhone-y quality to them.

The exception is the image of an international basketball player, captured in glorious hi-resolution – Schroder, in his red Germany basketball uniform.

So, how did he end up here?

“At some point, the idea came up that Dennis wanted to play with Daniel, his brother-in-law,” says Thomas Kohler, Bleckenstedt’s club secretary, board member and formerly head of the club’s youth section. “However, this requires playing authorisation, which Dennis has had since May 2022.

“Last week, our team had two home games in a row and Dennis was with us again as a spectator at the home game on May 26 (against SVG Gottingen) and then in a conversation with our coach, Gokhan Arikoglu, we agreed to play him in the next game.”

As a conceit, it is not so outlandish. Football is by far the most popular sport in Germany and as a boy, before he committed himself to basketball, Schroder was a talented player. He still is. And unlike some of the sky-scraping colleagues in his ‘day job’ whose size might make the sport tricky, he stands only 6ft 1in (185cm).

“Dennis is a surprisingly good footballer,” Kohler says. “If he hadn’t become a professional basketball player, he could have become a footballer — probably not as a professional, but I could imagine him in the middle-to-upper amateur level.”

Dennis Schroder in action (FC Germania Bleckenstedt)

In the competitive sense, Bleckenstedt’s season was already over.

Currently sixth in the Landesliga Braunschweig with one game left to play, they have been safe from relegation for some time. Eintracht Braunschweig II, whose senior team play in German football’s second tier, have dominated the division, meaning promotion has not been a possibility for many weeks.

Perhaps for the better, because Bleckenstedt took a heavy beating. They were 3-0 down within 27 minutes, and eventually lost 5-1.

Nevertheless, Schroder, 30, was still able to play alongside his brother-in-law and emerge unscathed from injury.

“Dennis played as a striker on the left side,” Kohler recalls. “Since Daniel defended on the left, it was a good fit. They were both able to support each other. It was the third-to-last game of the season, so it was no longer about the championship or relegation, but just the competition.

“Dennis was able to stay out of duels for the most part and the opponent – who also had nothing to play for – was also sensible around him and didn’t play too tough.”

Schroder (back row, third from left) with his Bleckenstedt team-mates (FC Germania Bleckenstedt)

Schroder, who wore the No 17 shirt he wears in the NBA (in honour of his father Axel, who died in 2009; it was his favourite number), enjoyed himself.

“My first football game was a really cool experience for me,” he told the club’s Instagram account after the game. “I really want to thank Bleckenstedt and send them love for that.”

He also revealed in that interview that a prior appearance for the side had been scuppered by the presence of local media. In the event, Bleckenstedt made no mention of Schroder’s impending appearance in the Gottingen game. The first news of it came just a few minutes before kick-off, when a blurry photo of him leaving the dressing room surfaced on social media.

The club did publish a video comprising of fan-shot footage the day after the game, but there was no intention to cash in — in fact, they did everything they could to stave off the attention.

“There were two reasons why we didn’t communicate this in advance,” explains Kohler. “Until a few hours before kick-off, it wasn’t clear whether Dennis would even play.

“And if we had communicated it beforehand, the media would have been all over us. We are a small village association where most of the work is done through voluntary work. The stewards, the cashiers and the staff who work the drinks stand and the grill – they are all volunteers. We wouldn’t have been able to cope with the media hype.”

There are no plans for Schroder to make a second appearance but, for one afternoon at least, the worlds of amateur German soccer and the NBA collided.

(Top photos: Getty Images and FC Germania Bleckenstedt)