{"id":6838,"date":"2023-09-06T19:39:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T14:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=6838"},"modified":"2023-09-06T19:39:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T14:39:02","slug":"germany-overcome-schroder-stinker-to-reach-basketball-world-cup-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/news\/germany-overcome-schroder-stinker-to-reach-basketball-world-cup-semis\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany overcome Schroder ‘stinker’ to reach Basketball World Cup semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Playmaker Dennis Schroder said he had “probably the worst game I ever played” but Germany still booked their place in the Basketball World Cup semi-finals on Wednesday with a win over giant-killers Latvia.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toronto Raptors point guard Schroder scored only four of his 26 field-goal attempts as Germany edged Latvia 81-79 in Manila to set up a final-four showdown with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Franz Wagner made up for the shortfall by scoring 16 points for Germany, while Andreas Obst had 13 and Moritz Wagner had 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schroder thanked his team-mates for bailing him out against a Latvia team that almost stole a win in the final seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s probably the worst game I ever played in my career,” said Schroder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But we’re still in the semi-finals so shout out to all these guys in the locker room for helping me win this game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s the reason why we’re all together and we’re a special team.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

World Cup debutants Latvia had already beaten defending champions Spain and Tokyo Olympics silver-medallists France on their way to the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They gave the unbeaten Germans a fright by jumping out to a 10-point lead after only five minutes, with Davis Bertans in deadly form from three-point range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany eventually gained the upper hand before a barn-storming finish from Latvia made the score closer than Germany would have liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany head coach Gordon Herbert said his team had “a little bit of a stinker on the offensive end”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think one of the strengths of this group is we’re a team, and our bench the last three or four games has been outstanding,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re able to play 12 guys if necessary.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result also eliminated Latvia from the race for one of the two Paris Olympic berths available for European teams at the World Cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arturs Zagars was Latvia’s top scorer with 24 points, followed by Bertans with 20 including six three-pointers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bertans said he was “extremely proud” of his team’s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We battled in every single game,” said Bertans, whose brother Dairis — the team captain — suffered a tournament-ending injury in the first round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think we put ourselves in a position to win, not because of any individual players — because we played like a team, we played the right way and unfortunately we couldn’t get it done at the end.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latvia head coach Luca Banchi said a bad run at the start of the fourth quarter was fatal for his team’s chances.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Playmaker Dennis Schroder said he had “probably the worst game I ever played” but Germany still booked their place in the Basketball World Cup semi-finals on Wednesday with a win over giant-killers Latvia. Toronto Raptors point guard Schroder scored only four of his 26 field-goal attempts as Germany edged Latvia 81-79 in Manila to set […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":6839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,2,53,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-sports","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}