Dennis Schröder is going to spend the next year in Boston playing for the Celtics on a 1-year, $5.9 million deal after the free agency market never formed for him as he had hoped. In a market saturated with point guards, Schröder found himself on the outside looking in as others like Kyle Lowry, Lonzo Ball, and Spencer Dinwiddie were able to cash in.
By the time the dust settled from the mad dash to open free agency, most all of the cap space around the league had dried up and Schröder, who had famously turned down a reported 4-year, $84 million extension from the Lakers, was left to find a small, one-year deal to prove his value once again. To many, Schröder’s offseason was a cautionary tale of betting on yourself, as his hopes of a nine-figure contract always felt lofty and to instead end up on a taxpayer mid-level meant Schröder became the butt of many jokes.
On Wednesday, the German point guard celebrated his birthday and took to Instagram to simultaneously flex some and steer into the skid, posing for a photo of him despondent in front of his Bugatti and Rolls Royce, with a bunch of Dior bags in his Dior Jordan 1s, asking for fans to drop their best “fumbled the bag” jokes in the comments.
Will this stop the jokes from coming his way? Absolutely not, but it certainly takes some of the sting out of them and will earn him some goodwill in the eyes of many, because it’s not always easy to embrace the jokes at your expense but he’s trying to take this one in stride. Part of that is, at this point, Dennis surely has spent time looking back on turning down the extension and thought about the financial mistake that was, but the good thing about pro sports is that if he looks good for the Celtics this year, he’ll recoup that money pretty quickly on the market again next season.