Perhaps the most polarizing player on the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2020-21 season was point guard Dennis Schroder.
The Lakers acquired Schroder in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder last offseason in exchange for Danny Green and a first-round pick. He was coming off a career season and the hope was that he would be a third scorer for the Lakers while taking some ballhandling duties from LeBron James in order to keep the superstar fresh.
Schroder’s first season with the Lakers was filled with ups and downs, including him turning down a four-year, $84 million extension so he can test free agency this offseason.
The 27-year-old’s play in the postseason was especially poor as the Lakers were bounced by the Phoenix Suns in the first round. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise when he declared that he wanted to return to L.A. next season directly after the Lakers were eliminated.
It appears that despite his poor play and declaration of wanting to return to the Lakers, re-signing Schroder will not come cheap. According to Vice President of the German Basketball Federation Armin Andres, Schroder is looking for even more money in free agency than the extension he turned does mid-season, via TalkBasket.net:
According to Armin Andres, Vice President of German Basketball Federation (DBB), the point guard is expecting to a deal in the range of $100-$120 million. Andres mentioned the fact as it the reason why Schroder is not representing Germany this summer as the burden of insuring his future contract of that value is too big on DBB.
“Dennis Schroeder has communicated this clearly: he wants 100, 120 million – which he will probably also get – and this sum insured cannot be insured on the normal market at the moment,” Andres said on Abteilung Basketball podcast as reported by Manuel Baraniak.
Given the lack of cap space around the league, it is hard to imagine Schroder getting a contract of that magnitude from anyone other than the Lakers, who own his full bird rights and can go over the cap to sign him.
If a team does offer Schroder anything close to that then the Lakers may very well let him walk, which wouldn’t be ideal considering they wouldn’t have the cap space to sign anyone else in his place and would lose the asset for nothing.
A sign-and-trade is also a possibility, although both teams and Schroder would all have to agree to a deal for that to happen.
Schroder sitting out Olympics due to free agency
Schroder typically plays for the German national team in the Olympics, but that will not be the case this summer in Tokyo as it was reported that he will be sitting out due to insurance purposes with his free agency.
This is clearly a big summer for Schroder, so it makes sense that he wants to stay as healthy as possible until he inks that long-term contract.
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