A big reception with the Federal President, a nice chat with the Chancellor: When Dennis Schröder shook the hands of the most powerful people in the country, the leader of the basketball world champions had finally arrived among the greats of German sport. If the NBA star were to sail across the Seine at the Olympics with the black, red and gold flag, an almost miraculous metamorphosis would be complete.
Schröder asked Germany’s greatest basketball player himself to tell him how this monumental moment would feel. None other than Dirk Nowitzki raved about 2008, when he was allowed to carry the flag into the bird net in Beijing.
“Dirk only said good and positive things – and that it changes your life,” said Schröder on Thursday in Berlin. The former Dallas Mavericks star, who carried the German flag at the opening ceremony in Beijing in 2008, also told him “that this was simply one of the greatest things he had ever done, that it was special and that you should enjoy it.”
He himself never tires of emphasizing how important it would be for him to carry the flag at the opening ceremony in Paris on July 26.
“It definitely means everything to me,” the 30-year-old said recently: “Being able to represent Germany with my origins – my mother is from Gambia – would make a statement – to carry the flag as a dark-skinned person.”
2024-07-18 13:14:00
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