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It’s been a bad last couple of months for Dennis Schroder. The guard completely disappeared for the Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs when they needed him the most and despite expressing interest in returning to the team, they’ve moved on. He continues to sit in free agency and it seems highly unlikely that he’s going to get the $100+ million contract he was gunning for.
What makes this worse for Schroder is that the Lakers did want him back. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst previously reported that the team offered him a four-year contract worth $84 million during the season. He turned that down as he believed he was worth more money. At this point, it’s hard to imagine he’ll get anything close to the contract that Los Angeles offered him.
Former Lakers champion Robert Horry was on ESPN’s The Jump and laid into Schroder.
“You said, ‘Oh, I want to return to the Lakers.’ But you wanted to play games,” Horry said. “Now you are the disaster of your own game plan. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You probably lost about $60 million because you didn’t sign with the Lakers. Now you’re probably going to have to sign a one-year deal because I don’t think the Lakers are going to bring you back because they’re stacked now. They have no room for you.
“He wanted to be a starter in this league,” he continued. “Now wherever he goes, he’s going to go back to being a backup. I just hope it doesn’t turn out like an [Isaiah Thomas] situation where you pass up on all this money, and you can never recoup it.”
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Schroder Is Looking Really Bad Right Now
What Horry is saying is harsh but it’s correct. The Lakers gave Schroder everything he wanted. They put him in the starting lineup and made him a big contract offer. He rewarded them with a zero-point playoff performance in a pivotal Game 5 against the Phoenix Suns. After that, it was pretty obvious the Lakers weren’t planning to bring him back on a big contract.
This whole free agency has been a disaster for the veteran guard. He could’ve had a nice contract on the Lakers but now he’s lucky if he gets anywhere close to $20 million a year. Schroder should serve as a cautionary tale to players around the league who overvalue themselves.
Celtics Could Be Schroder’s Last Hope
As Horry noted, Schroder is in for a much smaller contract than he was expecting. It seems like he’s having a hard time finding a team at all. That said, he is a talented player and will land somewhere. He may end up having to sign a one-year deal and try his hand at free agency again next year. According to Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer, the Boston Celtics may be the one team left that is willing to sign him.
“The Celtics have had conversations with free agent Dennis Schroder, per @JakeLFischer,” Guy Boston Sports tweeted.
If Schroder is hoping to play next season, he’s going to have to lower his demands.
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