The NBA is often thought to have a Hall of Fame. But strictly speaking, it does not. Instead, the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts – the vehicle often thought to be the NBA’s Hall of Fame – is instead a privately-owned enterprise with the self-appointed jurisdiction of being the Hall of Fame for the entire sport of basketball.
Being based in the USA and staffed almost entirely by Americans, the bias is obvious, and the supposition that it is an NBA production comes from this obvious weighting in favor of the homeland. For example, all 18 of the referees, all 14 of the teams, and almost all of the 81 “contributors” inducted are American, or did all their work on American shores. It is not an NBA endeavor, but it could easily be confused for one a lot of the time.
Nevertheless, the express remit holds that the Naismith Hall of Fame exists to “promote, preserve and celebrate the game of basketball at every level.” And with that in mind, once his playing career is over, German national team point guard and current member of the Sacramento Kings Dennis Schröder should be inducted.
Schröder’s Candidacy
If the Hall of Fame was an NBA vehicle, with eligibility based entirely on one’s NBA career, Schröder would of course not be in it.
Certainly, he is a good NBA player. Although he is now into the journeyman stages of it, Schröder proved his qualities as a plug-and-play ball-handler with his performances for the Detroit Pistons down the stretch of the 2024-25 NBA season, when he had a huge and quantifiable impact on the best Pistons season in a generation. Nevertheless, with career averages of 13.9 points and 4.9 assists per game that will only go down as he works through his 30s, along with no All-Star appearances or any individual awards, he is not a transformative player.
For Germany, though, he is. The German men’s national basketball team has been doing unprecedented, unforeseen things – and they have been doing them because of Schröder.
The Meteoric Rise Of German Basketball
To begin the streak, Germany unexpectedly won the 2023 FIBA World Cup, going undefeated on their way to the gold. They had finished 18th in the previous installment, and failed to qualify at all in the one before that – indeed, of the 19 editions of the competition to date, they have only appeared in seven, and only once previously finished in the top eight, when Dirk led them to a surprise bronze medal in 2002.
This sharp crescendo is mirrored in their Olympic record. Germany have appeared in only seven of the 20 games, missed all but one tournament between 1992 and 2020, and yet managed a fourth-place performance at the 2024 games, by far the best Olympic finish in the nation’s history.
Finally, this past weekend, the cherry was placed on the top. Germany went undefeated on their way to winning the 2025 EuroBasket tournament, besting their third-place finished in 2023. And at the crux of this renaissance has been the play of Schröder.
Germany is riding a crest of a talent wave right now, with Dirk’s legacy paying off in the form of the Wagner brothers Moritz and Franz, while ex-NBA player Daniel Theis is still a force in the international game. Stalwart national team bigs Johannas Thiemann and Johannes Voigtmann still put in shifts, Andreas Obst is one of the best shooters not in the NBA, and although combo guard Maodo Lo has never quite cracked an NBA playing roster, he could have done. They are not entirely a one-man team, particularly with Franz Wagner in the fold.
Nevertheless, Schröder is, in technical terms, “the man”. Winning the tournament MVP awards for both the 2025 EuroBasket and 2023 World Cup wins, as well as making the 2024 Olympics All-Star Five (the de facto Team of the Tournament), he has the accolades to back up the eye test. With the ball in his hands, the confidence his team has in him, and the confidence he has in himself, Germany can beat anyone. And these days, they beat everyone.
Schröder’s Forebears
In terms of Schröder’s candidacy for the Naismith Hall of Fame, one need only to look at two other prior inductees by way of comparison to get the gist.
Ubiratan “Bira” Maciel, a Brazilian center of the 1960s and 1970s, and Nikos Galis, a Greek star point guard of the 1980s and early 1990s, never played in the NBA at all, but made it in as players on account of both their domestic dominance back home and their impact for their national teams. Bira’s five domestic championships and leading role in Brazil’s 1963 World Cup goal medal saw him make the FIBA’s 50 Greatest Players list in 1991, while four-time EuroBasket Top Scorer, five-time EuroLeague Top Scorer, eight-time Greek League champion and five-time MVP Galis was on another plane in his heyday. He made that same top 50 list even when he was still an active player.
Bira and Gallis are worthy because they raised the game. They defined their sport in their countries and achieved new heights, with legacies that ring loudly even today. Their success was never measured through their impact in the NBA. Nor, then, should Schröder’s be.
It absolutely works in his favor that he has been a good NBA player for a dozen years already, with more to come, yet Schröder has moved the needle, made his country into a world leader, and done incalculable things for the sport in his home nation. Germany are a basketball powerhouse now, even more than they were when they had the great Dirk Nowitzki at the height of their powers. And Schröder is the man who makes it happen.
Dennis Schröder Should be Inducted Into the Hall of Fame